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Weather: Sunny, with a high near 76. North wind 7 to 13 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Monday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 59.
- 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 three-member East Flagler Mosquito Control District Board meets at 10 a.m. at District Headquarters, 210 Airport Executive Drive, Palm Coast. Agendas are available here. District staff, commissioners and email addresses are here. The meetings are open to the public.
Palm Coast Charter Review Committee Meeting: The city’s committee, appointed by the City Council to propose revisions to the city charter, meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 160 Lake Ave. The committee is made up of Patrick Miller, Ramon Marrero, Perry Mitrano, Michael Martin and Donald O’Brien. The meeting is moderated by Georgette Dumont, an independent moderator and the Director of the Master of Public Administration program at the University of North Florida. The meeting is open to the public and includes a public-comment segment.
The Flagler County Commission meets at 5 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 E. Moody Boulevard, Building 2, Bunnell. Access meeting agendas and materials here. The five county commissioners and their email addresses are listed here.
Nar-Anon Family Groups offers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetings here.
Notably: Casanova was a great admirer of the Frenchman, too great at times, and jealous. He wanted to be Voltaire but well knew, for all his wit and occasional dabbles in philosophy and enlightened libertinism, how far short he fell. Casanova enslaved a 13-year-old girl in Russia and called her Zaire after one of Voltaire’s more famous tales. He once stopped at the Hotel du Roule in Paris, a famously chic whorehouse with “good wines, excellent beds,” in Casanova’s recollection, run by a madam who called herself Madame Paris, who enjoyed the police’s protection, and whose girls had entertained Voltaire previously, though he’d not been able to perform (Casanova did). In 1760 Casanova visited Voltaire in Geneva. The two spent three days together but Casanova didn’t leave on the best terms, his jealous resentments getting the better of him. He’d end up writing reams against his old master, only regretting it all toward the end of his life as he wrote his Story of My Life (see below). So while Casanova wrote copious notes about his encounter and narrated it in his memoir, it isn’t “overstepping of the limits of the real,” in Poe’s phrase, to further imagine them discussing Donald Trump, as I asked Gemini to do for me. Here was the result, pretty close to character:
Casanova: (Sipping a divine, non-existent chocolate) My dear Arouet, you look positively distressed. Does the news from this American republic continue to trouble your Enlightenment ideals?
Voltaire: (Frowning over an ephemeral copy of the New York Times) Trouble me? It confirms every dark suspicion I ever harbored about the canaille—the rabble—and the leaders they choose when Reason slumbers! This ‘Trump.’ His entire oeuvre is a rejection of all we fought for: tolerance, intellectual discourse, and the separation of a statesman’s dignity from the coarseness of a street brawl.
Casanova: (A casual shrug) But, my friend, look at the spectacle! It is magnificent. You speak of dignity; I see raw, irresistible power. The man understands the human heart better than any King advised by a score of philosophers. He appeals directly to their vanity, their grievances, their sheer boredom with competence. He is a genius of the theatre, a master of self-mythology. I would have adored to sit at his gaming table.
Voltaire: A genius of the theater? Casanova, he is a tyrannical buffoon who mocks liberty! Where is the enlightened despotism that protects the sensible few from the foolish many? His very language is a battering ram against all good faith and verifiable fact. “Écrasez l’infâme!”—that was my cry against superstition. His supporters hail him as a prophet!
Casanova: Ah, but your infâme was The Church—a cold, organized edifice. This man is an adventurer, a flamboyant rogue who charms the masses by showing them they don’t need to be modest, polite, or even truthful. He is like a beautiful, chaotic Venetian masked ball, where everyone, from the lowliest peasant to the highest lord, feels permission to play the fool—and love the part! Is this not, in a perverse way, a kind of extreme liberty?
Voltaire: Liberty without wisdom is merely license for destruction! I championed the right to speak, but also the duty to think! This man has made a virtue of not thinking. He threatens to dismantle the institutions that prevent him from being King Louis XV, and his faithful applaud the very shackles he forges for them!
Casanova: (Smiling, tapping his chin) But my dear Arouet, he has found the true secret of governance in the modern age: Entertainment is authority. The people do not want a rational administration; they want a captivating story. They want to feel seen by a man who refuses to play by the rules they themselves are weary of. He is the ultimate disreputable rake, and the world is his conquest. Tell me, if you were still alive, would you not be forced to write a furious, brilliant pamphlet about him every week?
Voltaire: (A reluctant half-smile breaks his stern expression) Ah, Casanova, you always find the dramatic core in the political abscess. Yes… I would be writing. I would be exiled, imprisoned, and writing still. His existence is an offense to logic, but I confess, the sheer audacity of the comedy is… unprecedented.
Casanova: Precisely. The man may be a disaster for political order, but he is a glorious boon for the human comedy. A true adventurer always seeks out the grandest, most dangerous stage. And in 2025, that stage is undoubtedly the American Presidency.
Voltaire: A very modern tragedy, then, dressed as a very old farce.
Casanova: Or perhaps a grand, unforgettable seduction. One must simply enjoy the show while it lasts.
—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.
December 2025
Santa in Bunnell
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
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
‘Annie,’ at Limelight Theatre
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn
‘Greetings,’ A Christmas Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
For the full calendar, go here.
I left quite happy to have on this last day brought this athlete [Voltaire] to his senses; but I was left with a bad mood against him which forced me for ten years in a row to criticize everything old and new that I read that this great man had given, and was giving, to the public. I repent of it today, although when I read what I published against him68 I find that I was right in my censorship. I had to keep quiet, respect him, and doubt my judgments. I had to reflect that without the taunts with which he displeased me on the third day, I would have found him sublime in everything. This reflection alone should have silenced me; but an angry man always believes he is right. Posterity reading me will put me among the Zoyles, and the very humble reparation that I make to him today will perhaps not be read.
–From Casanova’s Story of My Life (1798).
Pogo says
@Great facility
… applied to the imagining of the musings of a couple of whore hopping dandies.
Good, a goal for life, is important — and good examples’ worth is beyond reckoning.
Bo Peep says
So hoping for a couple of idiots like Joey and Kamala in the White house again are you? You think that is normal?
Laurel says
Yes, compared to the lying thief in residence now.
How you don’t see…
Sherry says
And now for the “TRUTH” about trump’s terrible economy. . . This from wonderful Robert Reich:
Friends,
Trump claimed last week on social media that “Our economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” and that “grocery prices are way down.
Rubbish.
How do I know he’s lying? Official government statistics haven’t been issued during the shutdown — presumably to Trump’s relief (the White House said Wednesday that the October jobs and Consumer Price Index reports may never come out).
But we can get good estimates of where the economy is now, based on where the economy was heading before the shutdown and recent reports by private data firms.
First, I want to tell you what we know about Trump’s truly sh*tty economy. Then I’ll suggest 10 things that Democrats should pledge to do about it.
1. Prices continue to rise as real wages fall
While the cost of living isn’t going up as fast as it did in 2022, consumer prices are still up 27 percent since the onset of the pandemic. Wages haven’t kept up.
Americans know this. In a recent Harris poll, 62 percent say the cost of everyday items has climbed over the last month, and nearly half say the increases have been difficult to afford.
Much of this is due to Trump’s tariffs, which are import taxes — paid by American corporations that are now passing many of the costs on to consumers. Even Trump knows this, which is why he’s removing tariffs on coffee, bananas, beef, and other agricultural commodities. But his other tariffs will remain, boosting the costs of everything else.
As a result, wages — when adjusted for inflation — have been falling, government and private-sector data show. Since the start of the year, inflation has been rising faster than after-tax pay for lower- and middle-income households, according to the Bank of America Institute.
According to the JPMorganChase Institute, the rate of real income growth has slowed to levels last seen in the early 2010s, when the economy was still recovering from the financial crisis and the unemployment rate was roughly double what it is today.
2. Job growth has stalled
Americans are scared of losing their jobs. In the same recent Harris poll I referred to above, 55 percent of employed workers say they’re worried they’ll be laid off.
That worry is borne out in the data. Indeed’s job posting index has fallen to its lowest level since February 2021.
The Fed’s Beige Book — which compiles reports from Fed branches all over the country — also shows the job market losing steam.
The latest ADP private-sector data confirms that the labor market continued to weaken in the latter half of October, with more than 11,000 jobs lost per week on average.
Finally, Challenger, Gray & Christmas (a private firm that collects data on workplace reductions) reports that U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far in 2025. That’s the most layoffs since 2020, when the pandemic slammed the economy, and rivals job cuts during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009.
3. Homeowners are underwater, and foreclosures are up
Nearly 900,000 homeowners (about 1.6 percent of all mortgage holders) are now underwater on their mortgages, the highest share in three years. Many of these buyers purchased in 2022–24 with low down payments in markets that have since cooled.
At the same time, filings for home foreclosures are up about 17 percent since the third quarter last year (according to ATTOM Data Solutions), suggesting more borrowers in trouble.
4. Corporate profits continue to rise
You might think that with all these stresses on American consumers, corporate profits would dip. But in reality, U.S. corporate profits continue to rise, and the stock market continues to hit new highs (although the stock market is wobbly, as I’ll get to in a moment).
As a result, the investor class — the richest 10 percent of Americans, who own over 90 percent of the stock market — are reaping big rewards.
How to square this with all the layoffs and so few job openings? Amazon’s profits are through the roof, but it’s laying off 30,000 people.
First, corporations are reluctant to expand and hire because of so much uncertainty about the future, caused in large part by Trump’s tariffs and his expulsion from the U.S. of many workers critical to the agriculture and construction industries.
Secondly, profits are being led by the six major high tech firms, whose monopolistic hold over their markets has given them the power to raise prices.
Third, many corporations are making use of artificial intelligence. AI is boosting business productivity while reducing the demand for workers. We’re seeing that trend mostly in the technology sector, which continues to substitute AI for jobs. But the trend seems to be spreading to other industries.
5. Inequality is widening
Put this all together and you get a two-tier economy whose inequality gap is widening.
America has always had a two-tiered economy, but for the last 80 years, the middle class has been in the upper tier along with the wealthy, while the working class and poor have been in the lower one.
Now, the middle class is joining the lower tier. This new reality has huge implications both for the economy and for American politics.
The richest 10 percent of households — whom I’ve described as the investor class — now account for nearly half of total U.S. spending, thanks to the stock market surge. (Thirty years ago they were responsible for about a third.)
Meanwhile, middle- and lower-income families are pulling back. They’re facing tightening budgets, higher living costs, declining real wages, and a raft of corporate layoffs.
The consequent divergence in spending — with a smaller group of people keeping the economy going — is fueling concerns that the U.S. economy is becoming more fragile.
With the economy so dependent on the richest 10 percent — who in turn are highly dependent on the stock market — a stock market downturn would raise risk of a serious recession.
6. What the Democrats must pledge to America
The Trump economy is truly sh*tty for most Americans. Every time Trump or his lapdogs in Congress tell Americans that the economy is terrific, they seem more out of touch with reality.
Democrats need to show America that they can be better trusted to bring prices down and real wages up.
This means, in my view, promising the following 10 things. These should constitute the Democrats’ pledge to America:
1. Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are import taxes that are raising the prices of just about everything American consumers buy. Democrats will eliminate them where their costs to consumers are far higher than any potential benefits in the form of new jobs.
2. Another major source of high prices is monopolies — especially in high tech, health care, food, and finance. Democrats will vigorously enforce antitrust (anti-monopoly) laws. Giant corporations will be busted up. Mergers or acquisitions by large firms, barred.
3. Workers need more bargaining power to get higher wages. Part of the answer is stronger unions. Democrats will make it easier for them to start or join unions.
4. The national minimum wage will be raised to $20 an hour. No one who works full-time should be in poverty.
5. Housing cost increases will be slowed by stopping private equity firms from buying up large tracts of housing and colluding on prices.
6. Health care costs will be lowered by making Medicare available to everyone.
7. Working families will get help with child care and elder care.
8. They’ll also get paid family leave.
9. If adequate-paying jobs are unavailable, workers will also have access to a universal basic income. It won’t make families comfortable, but it will be enough to keep them out of poverty.
10. Taxes will be raised on the wealthiest to pay for this
. . . “I” (Sherry) would amend this to read “Tax Loopholes” will be closed so that the wealthiest are actually required to “PAY” their “Full Share” of taxes!
Laurel says
Trump is playing four dimensional chess with one king. A losing strategy.
Ray W. says
I accept that this Moneywise story is anecdotal, but since it is factual, I will present to the FlaglerLive community. Again, I do not claim to be an economist. At best, I am a curious student.
Wilson Jones, a 5th generation Mackeys Ferry Sawmill lumber mill owner who voted for President Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, just closed one of his two family-owned lumber mill companies, casting 50 North Carolinians out of work. 10 of the 50 accepted jobs at the Jones family sawmill located an hour away.
Said Mr. Jones to the reporter:
“When I say Liberation Day, I cannot put enough snark and sarcasm in my voice because we weren’t liberated. … Liberation Day, it did, at the time, it had damn near liberated me from our business.”
It’s been nearly 10 months since President Trump inherited what both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal described as an economy that was the “envy of the world”, and according to labor statistics gathered by the reporter, the manufacturing sector of the American economy has lost 78,000 jobs since the start of 2025. Actual hiring in the sector has declined by 5% over that time.
Mr. Jones sees a pattern developing:
“If you put all these little communities together from Maine over to Michigan, down to Mississippi and Alabama, it’s having the same effect on these small little communities. … From the guy that’s just stacking lumber to the guy that’s sawing — don’t even care about the guy that’s the mill owner — what about those guys.”
Per the reporter, its not just the jobs at the lumber mill or the steel mill. Any mill reliant on newly-tariffed imported materials pays more in costs to produce its product.
Wrote the reporter: “For every job in steel production, there are another 80 jobs in U.S. industries that use steel. … When steel prices go up — as they have, with some domestic producers raising prices 38.5% — those 80 downstream jobs suffer.”
Mr. Jones told the reporter what he would say to President Trump, if given the chance:
“President Trump, gee, I understand what you’re trying to do, but you’re on a fool’s mission. And you’re not helping out a few. You’re hurting a lot.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
From the beginning of this year’s tariff experiment, I have been arguing both that tariffs can have many different economic effects, depending on application, and that this year’s proposed and then paused and then increased and then paused and then withdrawn tariffs are at levels not seen in roughly 95 years.
No economist has a working model to explain the effects of these types of tariffs, meaning we are operating blind. So many externalities have occurred as a direct effect of the tariffs, both big and small.
Once again, as we did in 2018, we have taught Brazilian farmers how better to grow their soybeans. Argentine soybean farmers are watching and learning. Opportunity of types previously unanticipated are taking place all over the world. Industries are adapting rapidly.
If one sets out to tariff in order to bring back jobs that have been off-shored over past decades, then tariffs have to be long-term in order to entice manufacturers not only to spend the money to move a factory back to the country, but to keep it there. Long-term in this setting means decades, not years.
If one sets out to tariff in order to raise revenue, something American governments have done at many different levels and rates since the beginning of our nation, then tariffs have to be long-term to provide a stable tax policy that business owner’s understand. If short-term, the revenue will rise and then stop.
If one sets out to use tariffs to protect a particular already existing but struggling industry, like Harley-Davidson was struggling in the early- to mid-1980’s, then the tariff should be narrowly targeted and set at a level sufficient to protect the industry for only so much time as it takes for the industry to return to competitiveness.
If you want to use tariffs as a carrot or a stick to persuade nations to modify their own tariff behaviors, then your tariff policy needs to be flexible, so as to permit a pivot when an opening occurs during tariff negotiations.
But one should never ever heavily tariff an American staple like coffee when there is no American coffee industry to speak of, except Hawaii’s tiny specialty coffee industry.
And no one should ever heavily tariff an American staple like cocoa when America has zero cocoa farmers to protect. All this type of tariff accomplishes is directly imposing a tax on basic food products that nearly all Americans enjoy, mostly on a daily basis.
So here we all are. Many announced frameworks of a deal over the past 10 months. Many disputes arising from the announced frameworks of a deal. No negotiated long-term comprehensive agreements complete with clauses intended to permit enforcement of the deals when and if disputes over terms arise.
Pogo says
@Thank you sir
It will be no comfort, no repair, nor restoration — from the useless, senseless, pointless harm of the lost years of the Trump regime, but the toll will be his, its, mark on history. God forgive the fools and fiends who raised trump up over us. I never will.
Sherry says
Thank you Pogo! “I” also never will!
Ray W. says
The Mirror US reports on the arrest of two Jewish religious extremist settlers after two West Bank Palestinian villages were “ravaged.”
According to the reporter, dozens of “masked Israeli settlers” set fire to vehicles in two Palestinian villages. When IDF soldiers responded to the scene, the settlers “clashed” with the soldiers.
An IDF report alleged that four Palestinians were injured by “extremist violence.” Video emerged online showing the two burning trucks near a burning home.
According to a U.N. humanitarian agency report, more than 260 Jewish settler attacks on West Bank Palestinians occurred this past October.
The Washington Post reported that settler attacks “threaten” the Palestinian annual olive harvest.
In one assault, a 54-year-old Palestinian woman was clubbed unconscious in a field. A 50-year-old man rendered immobile by a severe beating while in his car could not exit it after settlers set it on fire. Two weeks on, he remains in ICU care.
The reporter wrote of 77 towns and villages being looted of property and vehicles burned by “Jewish extremists.”
The IDF issued a statement that it “firmly condemns all forms of violence, which divert the attention of commanders and soldiers from their primary mission of defense and counterterrorism.”
This after witnesses reported that IDF soldiers had participated alongside Jewish settlers in some of the violence.
The chairman of the Yesha Council, Yisrael Ganz, said:
“The pictures that we’ve seen in the last days and weeks, done by anarchists, don’t represent at all the hundreds of thousands of law-following residents of Judea and Samaria, and I strongly condemn them. … This kind of violence, which puts people’s lives at risk and breaks the rule of law, is not okay in any way.”
The reporter announced that “[t]he olive harvest has traditionally been a festive time. Palestinian families brought picnics to the fields and cooked stews of tomato and hot peppers on open fires beneath the trees.” No more.
“Last month, dozens of Palestinian families had come as a group to harvest the groves near the next-door village of Turmus Ayya, hoping there was safety in numbers. A video recorded that day captured the moment that a gang of settlers came over the top of a hill, some throwing stones at the farmers. A moving Palestinian vehicle was quickly overtaken, and the man inside jumped out, chased by the assailants as he fled. The families scattered as fast as they could, witnesses said, but it was if the settlers were hunting them. … Another video … showed a masked settler in jeans and sneakers sprinting towards … a woman named Alaf, clubbing her to the ground and then hitting her slumped body again.” Doctors used 24 staples to close her wounds.
According to the story, Yedioth Ahronot, described as a “prominent” Israeli daily newspaper, published a headline: “The situation is out of control, the IDF is doing nothing.”
Haaretz reports that “Jewish terrorism in the West Bank has a clear plan”, asserting that this is not a small group of “lost boys” committing “nationalist crime.” Hundreds of Jewish youth are nearly every day taking part in violence against Palestinians.
A video depicts masked Jews “rampaging” in a Palestinian industrial zone, burning and vandalizing property and assaulting Palestinians.
According to the Haaretz reporter, “[a] Jewish Ku Klux Klan has sprung up here. … The IDF officers on the ground don’t suffer from political naivety. They realize that this Jewish terrorism is operating as it is because the perpetrators believe that the messianic right in the governing coalition has its back. …”
In a story published by The Times of Israel, the reporter focused on the outcry by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “far-right allies” over a U.S. offer of a path to Palestinian statehood.
Saudi diplomats, it was written, are reviving diplomatic efforts at normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, under the concept of the Abraham Accords. To Saudi Arabia, one element of that diplomatic path is Palestinian statehood.
A U.S.-organized joint statement between several states other than Saudi Arabia, including Qatar, Egypt, the UAE, Indonesia, Jordan and Turkey, in the reporter’s words, includes language in President Trump’s 20-point plan that “offers a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded that Netanyahu “immediately formulate an appropriate and decisive response that will make it clear to the entire world [that] a Palestinian state will never be established on the territory of our homeland.”
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir declared that “there is no such thing as a ‘Palestinian people’.” He insisted that “they certainly do not deserve a reward for the terror, murder and atrocities they have sown everywhere.” He added, “The only real solution to Gaza is to encourage voluntary emigration.”
Per The Associated Press, after a Monday attack by Jewish settlers involving the “torching” of homes and cars, Prime Minister Netanyahu and other government leaders issued a “rare condemnation.”
According to this reporting, 2,660 Jewish settler attacks have been documented this year through September, not counting the more than 260 incidents of settler violence causing injury or damage to Palestinians or their property in October. 696 Palestinians have been killed thus far in West Bank attacks, as opposed to 38 Israelis.
Announced Mr. Netanyahu:
“I intend to deal with this personally, and convene the relevant ministers as soon as possible to provide a response to this serious phenomenon.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I doubt very seriously that there is peace in the Middle East.