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Weather: Partly sunny with a slight chance of showers in the morning, then mostly cloudy with showers likely with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 80s. South winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Sunday Night: Showers likely. A chance of thunderstorms, mainly in the evening. Cooler with lows in the mid 50s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph with gusts up to 20 mph. 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:
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.
‘The Drowsy Chaperone,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre, 11 Old Mission Avenue, St. Augustine, 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, $35. When wealthy widow, Mrs. Tottenham, hosts the wedding of the year, she gets a lot more than a write-up in the society pages. This magical piece of meta-theatre and playful, heartfelt parody of the 1920s musical comedy features a chirpy jaz
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]
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: There’s a pandemic of narcissism in our parking lots: the backing-in pandemic. It’s rampant. It was latent in the first century or more of vehicular driveslaughter. Now back-up cameras have turned an occasional necessity into a self-absorbed affectation. Backing in is allegedly done for the convenience and safety of driving off quicker and not hitting children along the way (always bring out that children card). But it takes three times as much time to back in and drive out than it does to drive in, back out and drive out. In net time spent parking and unparking, it’s a loss. Imbeciles don’t think that far. Not do they care that backing in is a time suck for everyone else as incapable driving goons (the bigger vehicle, the dumber the goon) slow time down to maneuver their car’s ass the right way, making everyone else around them wait. So it is now: the Me Decade on crack in this wasteland of parking lots.
After this Notebook published I received this note from a friend: “I’ve also heard the “back-in” boys (suspect it’s disproportionately a male phenomenon) refer to it as “combat parking”, adding the always popular military/law enforcement gloss to the inconvenience to others and giving their Alpha maleness a boost with the notion they can more quickly zoom into action if an undocumented person or Palestinian supporter appears unexpectedly. Too cynical?” Not in the least.
—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.
April 2025
Contractor Review Board Meeting
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting
In Court: Michael Jennelle Sentencing
In Court: Jayden Jackson Sentencing
Flagler Tiger Bay Club Guest Speaker: Brian London
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board
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
Town of Marineland Commission Meeting
Town of Marineland Commission Meeting
‘Sense and Sensibility’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
There are other ways parking wrecks the urban fabric. It creates its own sprawl — the more endless, often empty parking lots between businesses, the less walkable and more car-dependent the city becomes. Because pavement sucks up ambient heat, parking also creates enormous urban “heat islands” that intensify the effects of global warming. And requiring parking worsens inequality. Because people whose income is less tend to drive less and use transit more, they’re essentially being forced to pay for infrastructure they don’t need — while wealthier car drivers get a break on the true costs of their car habit. “People who are too poor to own a car pay more for their groceries to ensure that richer people can park free when they drive to the store,” [urban planning professor Donald] Shoup has written.
–From Farhad Manjoo’s “We’ve Got to Stop Requiring Parking Everywhere,” The New York Times, June 2, 2022.
Pogo says
@Apologies FlaglerLive
… this IS floriduh, gotta display duh commandments:
Ray W, says
Here’s one person’s take on the U.S. annexing Canada as a 51st state (letter to the editor of the LA Times):
“President Trump didn’t think things through regarding the takeover of Canada. With slightly more people than Californian, Canada would have, by one estimate, 47 electoral college votes. Bring in liberals with Canada’s national Pharmacare and universal health insurance plans and it would change the United States. So much for swing states. It would move the U.S. to the left and wipe out conservative majorities.
“Canada’s government negotiates prescription costs and healthcare fees. It spends a lot less on healthcare and gets much better outcomes overall. The 8% of Americans without healthcare insurance would vote with the Canadians. If the Supreme Court’s makeup changes, abortion could become legal in all U.S. states.
“Florida and Arizona, both of whom have big Canadian winter populations, may swing to Canadian views of liberalism. Canadians are less religious than Americans. It would be a reverse takeover of America.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
If President Trump is telling the truth when he says he seeks annexation of Canada, other scenarios than the Electoral College arise.
Our House of Representatives is limited to 435 members. California’s more than 39 million people give it 52 members. Florida’s more than 23 million people give it 28 seats.
If you add in Canada’s more than 41 million people, taking America’s roughly 340 million people to roughly 380 million, how many seats would be taken away from California and Florida to keep the number of House seats at 435?
If per district populations have to be adjusted for the new 41 million people, perhaps Canada might get 51 seats, and California might lose 4 or 5 seats and Florida might lose 2 0r 3 seats. Texas might lose 3 or 4 seats.
If Canadians really are as angry as some say, their pushback against Republicans might be a permanent thing. Maybe not.
I have long stated that I am a Hegelian in temperament, but the immediate damage to the Republican Party should Canada be admitted as a 51st state may take a long time to repair.
Adding two seats to the Senate’s existing 100 seats may change who controls the Senate.
On the other hand, if President Trump is the leading member of the professional lying class of one of our two national political parties, perhaps this is just him talking to hear his head roar.
Engin Ruslpostur says
If you were going for sarcasm and / or humor , you failed miserably. In an insult laden tirade, you demonstrate that YOU are the sad representative of the Me generation and likely a typical irritating driver who ride my bumper as I drive the speed LIMIT. You complain that others Suck your time, when in fact, your irritating and undeserved arrogance can’t let you leave on time for appointments so that you have to speed, use your horn and risk the lives children with your reckless driving habits. In all my years, in any part of the world, I’ve never found a real “alpha male” who EVER used that title to describe themselves .
By the way, if the imbeciles who design parking lots in this state would not make them like a squirrel on drugs designed the mazes full of blind corners, tall plants and road obstacles, things would be easier. In any event, you and the sad clowns you cite should leave for appointments 10 minutes earlier and stop your grievance baby whining .
Ray W, says
The Guardian published a story carrying the headline: “Trump says the economy ‘went to hell’ under Biden. The opposite is true”
Here are a few bullet points from the story:
– During the Biden years, the U.S. added 16.6 million jobs, more than during any previous presidential term. President Trump often says that job growth under Biden was “terrible.”
– During Trump’s first administration, the U.S. lost 2.7 million jobs. The author also points out that the pandemic was “largely” responsible for many of Trump’s job losses, which is what I have been arguing for years, but even during the first 38 months of the Trump administration, his jobs added average was less than Obama’s second term average and half that of Biden’s average jobs added figure.
– This past Tuesday, President Trump claimed that both the U.S. and its economy “went to hell” under Biden.
– During his recent national address, Trump said: “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”
– Year-over-year rolling inflation average last month was 2.8%. Monthly inflation statistics, due to their volatility, are inherently less useful, but inflation last month rose to 3%. The only reason I type this last 3% monthly statistic is that the reporter concludes that Trump may be continuing to focus on Biden so that if Trump policies damage the economy in any way, he will likely then blame Biden for the damage.
– Moody Analytics chief economist, Mark Zandi, says:
“President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets. … The US economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.”
Please think about Zandi’s words. Yes, after the pandemic, the US economy grew faster than it did during the Trump economy prior to the pandemic and faster than any other significant world economy.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
About 3 1/2 years ago, I began commenting on the unusual dollar amounts of the Trump and Biden unfunded stimulus funding bills that they signed into law. I based my comments back then on the fact that economists were still arguing whether the $770 billion TARP corporate bailout of GM and Chrysler, among others, plus the addition another $2 trillion in unfunded stimulus money was too little, too much, or just right. No one had ever tried anything so large before. Still, it took years for the US economy to fully emerge from the Great Recession.
I then argued that the $6 trillion in pandemic stimulus money (later revised to $9 trillion) was unlike by far anything ever tried before and that economists could not grasp the enormity of it all.
42 months ago, the vast majority of economists predicted a “hard landing”, meaning recession after an overheated economy crashed back to earth.
Time went by and a trickle, then a stream of economists begins talking of a “soft landing”, meaning the economy would come back to earth before taking off again.
Time went by again, and a majority of economists began predicting the soft-landing scenario, and a trickle of economists began talking of no landing at all.
Time went by again, and the number of “no landing” economists became a majority.
A trickle of economists now speak of recession and stagflation. They are a minority, and the data seems slim and too short-term right now. Who knows what they will be saying in a few months?
Back to the article.
– Trump has repeatedly stated that tariffs will bring back manufacturing jobs.
– During the Biden years, manufacturing jobs grew by 750,000, the most under any president since the 1970s. The author notes that most of the 750,000 added manufacturing jobs came from investments by “green jobs legislation” and the Chips Act.
– “Ever since the pandemic ended, economic growth in the US has been considerably stronger than in the UK, France, Germany and other G7 nations.”
– During the Biden years, “the average jobless rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s.”
– The Economist ran a story late last year describing the US economy as having “left other rich countries in the dust.” The magazine presaged the Wall Street Journal later editorial by describing the US economy as “the envy of the world.”
Ray W, says
Per Interesting Engineering, a British University research team formed Aegis FibreTech to further develop a new insulation material made from an “eco-friendly bioactive glass”, belonging to a class of glass-ceramic biomaterials.
Here are some bullet points:
– Manufacture involves “electrospinning”, i.e., an electrical field that pulls polymer solutions into incredibly thin reusable “nanofibers” that can be woven into a heat shield.
– The shields can be as thin as 0.5 mm or can be woven into a flexible “cotton-wool” consistency.
– “Aegis FibreTech’s materials are so light you can’t feel the weight of them. They provide an effective heat-shielding barrier to temperatures of up to 1000 [degrees Centigrade] and could reduce the weight of a fire blanket to that of a couple sheets of paper.”
Make of this what you will.
Sherry says
SUPPORT CANADA While Protesting Trump. . . Since Maga has essentially taken over the USA flag, Fly the Canadian Flag! This is going VIRAL!!!
Go Steve Schmidt! Take a moment:
Steve Schmidt — a Never EVER Trumper — and former John McCain aide and political strategist — on America’s current trouble with Canada. It’s a reminder there are many good people, like Steve, living in America — I’d like to think most of them — and that our fight is with their rogue leader, not them.
*****
“You do your worst. We’ll do our best.”
– Winston Churchill
Donald Trump’s assaults against Canada are a disgrace.
They defile the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers on a hundred battlefields around the world where they fought and died for freedom. They kept the peace often side-by- side with their American brothers and sisters in arms.
Canada is a giant nation, not because of her immense geography, but rather the magnitude of her immense contributions towards peace, justice and human progress.
Donald Trump’s aggression will fail because Trump is small, and Canada is great. Yet, this season of abject idiocy and insult will long linger.
It will long stain our national honor.
If that formulation of words seems strange or antiquated to you then please consider that might be a major cause of our current dilemma.
A great nation cannot remain so for long when virtue becomes an endangered species, and nobility becomes an alien concept in a society that is built on a foundation of ideas about human liberty — not nihilistic philosophies about the rights of the strong to destroy as they please, and take what they want — whether it be from a person, a family, a community, or a smaller nation.
The overwhelming majority of Americans find Trump’s bluster around Canada to be incomprehensibly asinine. They do not take his threats seriously, which is a mistake. It is well past the hour when the White House gangster should be taken both literally and seriously.
It should also be acknowledged that there are far too many Americans walking around with a frightening gleam in their eyes. These are the people who have become excited and enthralled around the idea of smashing and burning everything they see so it can be great.
What I am describing is a human sickness. It is manifesting itself in a place — the United States — where generations thought it could not.
Yet, it has.
Donald Trump’s inaugural tirade was a declaration of repudiation against the Atlantic Charter signed in Placentia Bay, The Bretton Woods Agreement, the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and NATO.
It is time to appreciate his intentions and understand that if he could make what he is saying so, he would in an instant. The failure to fiercely object to his insanity from the first instance only encourages more of his aggression.
No sane person should think Donald Trump possesses the capacity for restraint. Each day’s actions are a probing attack at the boundaries of what might be possible or achievable.
Would Donald Trump imprison journalists and kill his opposition if he could?
The answer is yes. and only a fool would debate the point. When Donald Trump puts his head down at night he does so dissatisfied. He dreams of becoming Putin, a man with no constraints. He dreams of being a czar. The biggest mistake of the last 10 years has been the singular inability by anyone to tell Donald Trump, “NO!”
The time has come. He must feel the wall. He must be turned back, or he will move forward.
What makes this current situation truly despicable from an American perspective is the lack of apoplexy and disgust from America’s elected representatives, including governors, US senators and US representatives.
Where is the outrage from Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and JB Pritzker of Illinois? What about Kathy Hochul of New York? Tony Evers of Wisconsin? What about Tim Walz of Minnesota?
How about California’s Gavin Newsom? Maybe he could have taken a moment from his congress with the leader of the Trump jungen, the Christian Nationalist fascist, Charlie Kirk.
Where are the voices of decent Americans and Canada’s American friends?
Why have no American leaders stood side-by-side with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and (almost former) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa, and denounced Trump’s sinister recklessness — and the real harm to real people, who are being made to feel great anxiety about their economic well-being, safety and futures.
Canada is being squeezed by MAGA maliciousness on one side, and the pathetic weakness of the Schumer Democrats on the other. They are bound on one side by menace, and on the other with fecklessness.
It is an awful situation.
Show me the speeches on the floor of the US House and US Senate rising in moral indignation around threats to our ally, neighbor and friend by the American Nero.
Where are they?
There are none. Not a peep.
There is silence from America’s governors and silence from America’s business leaders. There is silence everywhere from everyone about something every American should be shamed by, and ready to scream in the street to Trump that “you will dare not do this in our name.”
Donald Trump is directly, repeatedly and consistently threatening Canadian sovereignty and the liberty of 40,000,000 people.
This aggression is both real and a staggering betrayal.
Canadians and Americans have fought together, bled together, and died together. Their shared cause and faith was the liberation of the oppressed and enslaved. Neither country has waged wars of conquest for territories and empires. The sons of each can be found buried in French soil, where the graves all face home towards the free nations of the North American continent.
This is not who we are. We must never become what Donald Trump’s dark dreams imagine we might become as he seeks to remake America in his image, while pulling Washington, Lincoln and King’s portraits off of the wall. One thing is for sure: the placement of Winston Churchill’s bust in the Trump Oval Office is like inviting a convent of nuns to a whorehouse happy hour.
There are Canadian-American families on both sides of the border. Donald Trump is attacking each and every one as he seeks to take what is not his — and never will be.
Canada is not for sale and the United States of America is not Putin’s Russia, regardless of whatever sick fantasy swirls in the head of Orange Nero, his ludicrous vice president, or his Ketamine-addicted unelected prime minister.
What is it that MAGA fanatics are proposing?
After Canada, what sovereign nation will be the next target of Trump’s aggression? When will the American people wake up to the fact that Donald Trump has the power to make his aggressions those of America? Then, we will all be guilty of his crimes.
Donald Trump is a fraud and a liar, but I seem to recall his objections to what he said were “ridiculous endless wars” that America lost over the last 20 years. There is no war more conceivably stupid than the one Donald Trump is waging to impoverish Canada so that he can annex it for the trees, minerals, oil and gold.
What I am describing here is not an objectionable and obnoxious foreign policy vision.
Rather it is a disease of the mind — specifically Donald’s — and of the heart — again also Donald’s. It is also one of his twisted court filled with imbeciles, ne’er do wells, criminals, fraudsters, sociopaths, thugs and wannabe gangsters, who have succumbed to arrogance and fever dreams that preface a catastrophe before the fall.
Because Donald Trump is a predator with a deformed character, brittle ego and absolute incapacity to see the world beyond the edge of his interests and money, this obscenity may seem normal to him, but that doesn’t make it so.
The record shows that he cares for no one. He has never encountered a cause, idea or ideal that transcends anything beyond his malignant narcissism.
Trump shares a deformed personality trait with Hitler.
Hitler thought he was a world-class artist with an unparalleled artistic and architectural vision that would turn Berlin and the conquered nations into a new Rome with structures that would endure for thousands of years past the Thousand-Year Reich.
When the Nazis conquered Paris, Hitler did not enter the city to shoot Jews. He went on an architectural sight-seeing tour with Albert Speer.
This is precisely how Trump behaves, except for him, the art we are talking about is the ‘art of the deal.’
It is all nonsense.
Trump is no dealmaker. There are no deals that he can cite beyond the redevelopment of the Hyatt at Grand Central Station. It takes a special type of imbecile to go bankrupt running a casino. What Trump shares with both Hitler and Musk, who is a Nazi, is an unbridled megalomania that is incomprehensible to any normal person unless they have some fluency with history or expertise in psychology.
Have no doubt that each time Donald Trump threatens Canada, Lindsey Graham is somewhere close by, on his knees, in a closet, somewhere close, telling Nero that he is Churchill.
Ed P says
Anyone interested in the actual Canadian Statehood hoax simply needs to refer back to the AP news story dated December 3 2024 by Rob Giles.
“ public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended the Friday dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, said Trump’s comments were in jest. The President was teasing us. It was, of course, on that issue, in no way a serious comment.”
Everything need to be framed in the actual context it occurs.
Sherry says
3/13 CBS News:
On Thursday, Mr. Trump questioned the international boundary between the U.S. and Canada, calling it an “artificial line” that somebody drew decades ago.
“Makes no sense,” he said.
This week, Mr. Trump imposed 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada and threatened to double the levies if the country did not suspend its new 25% surcharge on exports of electricity to several U.S. states.
Mr. Trump has justified the tariffs as protecting U.S. interests, though the existing trade agreement with Canada was negotiated and signed by him during his first term. The president suggested that Canada should acquiesce to his requests for annexation to alleviate the economic pressure.
“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” Mr. Trump wrote Tuesday. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear. Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the World will be bigger, better and stronger than ever — And Canada will be a big part of that.”
The Hill 3/16:
Kirsten Hillman, Canadian ambassador to the U.S., said on Sunday that her country takes its sovereignty “seriously” as President Trump appears to be holding firm in his ambitions to make Canada the 51st U.S. state.
In an interview on “Fox News Sunday,” Fox News anchor Jacqui Heinrich asked whether Canada’s new prime minister, former central banker Mark Carney, hasn’t connected yet with Trump because of the U.S. president’s remarks about making Canada the 51st state.
“I think we take seriously our sovereignty. We take seriously the will of Canadians, and over 91 percent of Canadians are, you know, not interested in a discussion around joining the U.S.,” Hillman said. “So I think he takes that seriously.
“And that’s not a slight to the president, and that’s not a slight to the American people,” she continued. “It’s an expression of our own patriotism and our own sense of who we are as a country.”
Whathehck? says
Ed P.
Of course the Canadian took this as a hoax because no sane person could have uttered such nonsense. The time of the “joke” has passed and Don Bonaparte is out to conquer a world for himself. I am patiently waiting for his Waterloo.
Remember how Covid and global warming are still hoaxes for Don Bonaparte but not for the world.
Sherry says
AGAIN. . . trump, again and again, in 2025, says he wants (sane or insane) Canada to be the 51st state. . . this from a Fox interview, therefore maybe everyone will actually watch it: