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Weather: A 40 percent chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 68. West wind 6 to 13 mph becoming north in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 20 mph. Monday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 52.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
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- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Today is Presidents’ Day. Schools, courts, and some government offices are closed.
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: So it’s presidents’ day today. No need to stress, overstressed as we are by the fact, that it is a little difficult to have no president, especially when we remember the not at all distant past of our hopes and shock at how good this nation can be, when it wants to be. On Nov. 7, 2008, less than three months before his death from cancer in his lung he did not yet know he had, and three days after Obama’s election, John Updike wrote Ian McEwan, the English novelist with whom he’d developed as close a friendship as he had with any writer in his later years, of his joy at the election result. But perceptive as he was when he wanted to be, he also saw what we were becoming: “Obama’s election has thrilled us, but the endless anxiety attached first to the primary against Hillary and then the brutal battle with the infuriating McCain-Palin duo has been a mental drain that shattered my normally aloof and dispassionate view of American politics. Electing this particular man seemed such a splendid opportunity for my beleaguered superpower, but there was no guarantee it would not slip through the butterfingered hands of this dear democracy. Really, the constant radio and TV interviews with racist conservatives and undecided voters basking in their moment in the headlights revealed a stupidity lower than bestial, and made me thank the Lord that I no longer had to push Harry Angstrom through any more maneuvers in this dreary entertainment-soaked swamp of obesity and unpaid mortgages.” I had wondered, with Rabbit Angstrom in his loins, what Updike would have made of Ubu Roi. Now we know: he had him pegged.
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 2026
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Flagler Beach All Stars Beach Clean-Up
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
2nd Annual Italian Festival
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club, at Flagler Beach Public Library
“My Fair Lady,” at Daytona Playhouse
Celebrating Celine! with Jenene Caramielo, at the Fitz
“Godspell,” at the Limelight Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
“My Fair Lady,” at Daytona Playhouse
Al-Anon Family Groups
For the full calendar, go here.
White people, who had the political educations of potatoes—lumpy, unseasoned, and biased toward the Irish—were suddenly feeling compelled to speak out about injustice. This happened once every forty years on average, usually after a period when folk music became popular again. When folk music became popular again, it reminded people that they had ancestors, and then, after a considerable delay, that their ancestors had done bad things.
–From Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking About This (2021).
Ray W says
According to a Raw Story article, a Republican Trump donor and vocal advocate of Trump’s tariff policies, announced plans to close one of his business ventures, a factory that produces brass musical instruments, in order to move production to China.
Make of this what you will.
Bo Peep says
Biden really made Tricky look good. But then again in Nixon’s days politicians who broke the law were being held accountable.
Ray W says
A short while ago, I commented that mere days after the conclusion of the Davos economic summit, nine European countries signed an long-delayed agreement to jointly construct a massive interconnected wind farm stretching from waters off Iceland to Poland to Great Britain, and parts in between. The given reasoning was that, after spending billions and billions of dollars to gain energy independence from Russian oil and gas, all that had happened was that the EU was now dependent for its energy needs on American oil and gas.
The question often raised after the Trump performance at Davos was whether the EU should be dependent on the U.S. for its energy needs or on China, which makes most of the world’s windmills. The nine European countries just chose China.
Bloomberg is reporting that a few days after Trump’s performance at Davos, the Swedish government raised the issue of debating whether to adopt the EU dollar as its national currency.
In 1995, when Sweden joined the EU, it specifically opted out of the adopting the EU dollar in order to keep the krona as its national currency. In 2003, in a national referendum, the people voted to keep the krona as its national currency.
After Davos, a Swedish government spokesperson commented that America might better be placed in a category with China and Russia and that the Swedish people ought to consider moving toward the EU dollar and away from the U.S. dollar.
After this past weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Poland’s President told a reporter that Poland should develop its own nuclear arsenal. He was not alone. Germany’s President has announced that his government is negotiating with France about extending the French nuclear umbrella to cover Germany and the Latvian government has announced that it might be wise for it to consider nuclear deterrent measures.
Said Polish President Karol Nowrocki:
“We must work towards that goal so that we can begin the work. We are a country right now on the border of an armed conflict. The aggressive, imperial attitude of Russia towards Poland is well known.”
According to the reporter, when asked just how Russia might react to a Polish nuclear weapons program, President Nowrocki replied, “Russia can react aggressively to anything.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W says
For well over a decade, environmentalists and miners squared up over development of the “Pebble” project.
The issue?
Toxic waste inhering in the earth to be mined may flow downstream from the mines into Alaska’s Bristol Bay estuary, our nation’s richest salmon spawning fishery.
After years of legal debate, the EPA denied permits sought by miners.
Then, the USSC rewrote EPA policy methods of interpretation in favor of the miners.
Tomorrow, two new hearings challenging the EPA permit vetoes are set to determine the effect of the rewritten rules.
Estimated ore reserves are 80 billion pounds of copper, six billion pounds of molybdenum, 67 million ounces of gold, plus significant quantities of rhenium, a rare-earth metal.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
It’s a mid-term election year. Government-sponsored snuff films have badly damaged the Republican brand. Republican lies are becoming more strident. The lie-laundering into the FlaglerLive community grows.
The Pebble project has all the earmarks of a major Republican misinformation and disinformation campaign.
Maybe I am wrong.
Skibum says
Today is Presidents Day. I celebrate our nation’s long history and our previous presidents, some great, others good, and a few who have been just mediocre or bad to the bone. I count our current convicted felon sex abuser pedophile protecting maniac among the latter.
The current occupier of the oval office continues to criticize and trash our nation’s athletes who are competing in the Olympic Games in Italy for speaking out as their constitutional rights permit them to do. The convicted felon prez is unhappy with them for criticizing the brutality and violence that his masked ICE agents are committing against immigrants as well as U.S. citizens, violating people’s rights, locking them up without due process, and refusing in some cases to abide be federal court orders.
The convicted felon prez wants all of us to be dumb enough to actually believe him when he says on social media that athletes should not criticize America when they are out of the country, representing the U.S. in the Olympic Games. Well, his statements to that effect seem to suggest that he believes it is okay to do so when athletes are home here in the U.S., but is that reality?
We have proof to the contrary. Take athlete Colin Kaepernick… remember him? When he took a knee on the football field right here in the U.S. to protest black citizens’ treatment by law enforcement officers, the convicted felon spoke out loudly, trying to get NFL team owners to summarily fire any football player who dared to take a knee on an American football field. He said there was no tolerance for athletes to have opinions while playing football!!!
So all of this fake outrage and lies about athletes overseas waiting until they return to the U.S. to “regain” their first amendment constitutional rights of free speech is total BS, because the felon prez never wants to allow them to speak out even when home!
So today I say Happy Presidents Day to all of our former U.S. presidents, and to the current convicted felon sex abuser protector of pedophiles who is sitting in the WH, I say loudly that Americans everywhere cannot wait until you are GONE… whether that be buried six feet under, or in a prison cell where you belong, or just relegated to the dust bin of history because you are not only the worst president in our nation’s history, you are the very worst example of humanity period – completely unpatriotic, undignified, uneducated and an unmitigated disaster for this great country that is and always has been GREAT without you!
Ray W says
Hello Skibum.
On September 19, 1796, Philadelphia’s Daily American Advertiser published President Washington’s Farewell Address, an address co-written in part by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
Here is an excerpt from the Address warning the nation against the influence of faction and party politics:
“Let me take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.
“This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy.
“The alternate domination of one faction or another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual, and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty.
“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community, with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one party against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus, the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
It is clear that many of our founding fathers knew that the most baneful among them would always walk among us, that the greatest threat to their experiment of a liberal democratic Constitutional republic would come from pestilential partisan members of faction coalescing under a chief of faction who would elevate himself over the ruins of public liberty.
Sherry says
Thank you Skibum! Excellent comment!
Pogo says
On the other hand
https://www.google.com/search?q=great+us+presidents
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQOaUnSmJr8&list=RDdQOaUnSmJr8&start_radio=1
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
Ray W says
Hello Pogo.
Long, long ago, Euclid said, “The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.”
Laurel says
That may very well be true! If one simply studies the pedals, and seeds of a flower, math becomes evident.
Ray W says
Hello, Pogo.
It bears repeating that Churchill said we are all worms, but I am a glow worm.
Sherry says
NEWS Not Seen on FOX:
trump’s attempts at “white washing history” thwarted by judge appointed by Republicans, while quoting Orwell . . . this from the AP:
An exhibit about nine people enslaved by George Washington must be restored at his former home in Philadelphia after President Donald Trump’s administration took it down last month, a federal judge ruled on Presidents Day, the federal holiday honoring Washington’s legacy.
The city of Philadelphia sued in January after the National Park Service removed the explanatory panels from Independence National Historical Park, the site where George and Martha Washington lived with nine of their slaves in the 1790s, when Philadelphia was briefly the nation’s capital.
The removal came in response to a Trump executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks. It directed the Interior Department to ensure those sites do not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe ruled Monday that all materials must be restored in their original condition while a lawsuit challenging the removal’s legality plays out. She prohibited Trump officials from installing replacements that explain the history differently.
Rufe, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, began her written order with a quote from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” and compared the Trump administration to the book’s totalitarian regime called the Ministry of Truth, which revised historical records to align with its own narrative.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Rufe wrote. “It does not.”
She had warned Justice Department lawyers during a January hearing that they were making “dangerous” and “horrifying” statements when they said Trump officials can choose which parts of U.S. history to display at National Park Service sites.
The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling, which came while government offices were closed for the federal holiday.
The judge did not provide a timeline for when the exhibit must be restored. Federal officials can appeal the ruling.
The historical site is among several where the administration has quietly removed content about the history of enslaved people, LGBTQ+ people and Native Americans.
Signage that has disappeared from Grand Canyon National Park said settlers pushed Native American tribes “off their land” for the park to be established and “exploited” the landscape for mining and grazing.
Last week, a rainbow flag was taken down at the Stonewall National Monument, where bar patrons rebelled against a police raid and catalyzed the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. The administration has also removed references to transgender people from its webpage about the monument, despite several trans women of color being key figures in the uprising.
The Philadelphia exhibit, created two decades ago in a partnership between the city and federal officials, included biographical details about each of the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the home, including two who escaped.
Among them was Oney Judge, who was born into slavery at the family’s plantation in Mount Vernon, Virginia, and later escaped from their Philadelphia house in 1796. Judge fled north to New Hampshire, a free state, while Washington had her declared a fugitive and published advertisements seeking her return.
Because Judge had escaped from the Philadelphia house, the park service in 2022 supported the site’s inclusion in a national network of Underground Railroad sites where they would teach about abolitionists and escaped slaves. Rufe noted that materials about Judge were among those removed, which she said “conceals crucial information linking the site to the Network to Freedom.”
Only the names of Judge and the other eight enslaved people — Austin, Paris, Hercules, Richmond, Giles, Moll and Joe, who each had a single name, and Christopher Sheels — remained engraved in a cement wall after park service employees took a crowbar to the plaques on Jan. 22.
Hercules also escaped in 1797 after he was brought to Mount Vernon, where the Washingtons had many other slaves. He reached New York City despite being declared a fugitive slave and lived under the name Hercules Posey.
Several local politicians and Black community leaders celebrated the ruling, which came while many were out rallying at the site for its restoration.
State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Philadelphia Democrat, said the community prevailed against an attempt by the Trump administration to “whitewash our history.”
“Philadelphians fought back, and I could not be more proud of how we stood together,” he said.
HANNAH SCHOENBAUM