The firefighters who saved the majority of the cathedral, which could very well have collapsed without their heroism, now stand as tall and as anonymous as the architects and masons of Notre Dame. They deserve their own Victor Hugo.
pierre tristam
Trump Is No Longer the Greatest Danger to the Country. Biden Is.
Biden has a choice: certain defeat and a Trump win, or stepping aside and letting Democrats take the only kind of gamble that gives them at least a competitive chance to win in November, with either California’s Gavin Newsom or Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer at the top of the ticket–and with Whitmer clearly the better of the two. If the Democratic Party allows Biden to dig in, the party loses all legitimacy going forward.
American Impressions 1 | The Day Before America
In the first of nine installments of his American Impressions series–a reporter’s journey across the 50 states–Pierre Tristam fills in details that marked his youth in war-torn Lebanon and defined his outlook before migrating to the United States and beginning a process of discovery that continues to this day.
The GOP Is Using ‘Parental Rights’ to End Public Education as We Know It
The Florida GOP is using the Parents’ Bill of Rights to weaponize a minority of insurrectionist parents against schools, giving parents the right to violate privacy and autonomy where it counts most at school: between students and teacher. No wonder there’s a teacher exodus. It’s just what the GOP wants. Destruction from within.
Why All Boys Aren’t Blue Belongs in High School Libraries: A Response to Brian McMillan
Palm Coast Observer Editor Brian McMillan would restrict the book at the center of a controversy from high school libraries, even though he doesn’t find it pornographic. His argument and his prescription are untenable, because they rest on an analogy that has no application to George Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” A school district committee is currently reviewing the book’s status.
In Maskless Flagler, We’re All Covid’s Sitting Ducks
Flagler County is in the worst public health crisis it has known in its history, with at least 10 covid deaths a week as many school infections in 3 weeks as all of last year combined, yet the debate remains immobilized by a war on masks that defies science and daily grim realities.
The Forever Failures
President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is welcome news, in one sense. Our part of the war will finally be over. But it’s 20 years too late. And his claim that we achieved our goals is absurd. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban won. We lost another war where we did not belong.
Palm Coast and Flagler at Risk of Overfunding Police
Policing in Flagler has never been at risk of “defunding,” nor have relations between police and the community lacked for cohesion and respect. But Sheriff Staly’s request for 25 additional deputies from Palm Coast and the county overplay a hand, while both governments are teetering on going along with what would be overfunding police, at the expense of other needs.
The Sleaziest Generation
This fourth wave of covid is ravaging the state. It was entirely preventable but for glib, “don’t Fauci my Florida” recklessness and the militancy, disinformation and poisonous selfishness of the unvaccinated. This is on them.
Palm Coast at a Crossroad: Assassins of Civility or Governance
Ed Danko and Victor Barbosa since their election have turned the Palm Coast council into an embarrassment. The two are vying for a third vote in Alan Lowe and the mayor’s seat. That potential majority risks turning the city into a mirror of the toxic trio.
A Qualified Defense of Trump Supporters’ Obscenities in Flagler Beach
Obscene pro-Trump demonstrators’ signs now flashing regularly in Flagler Beach are no different than signs using similar language at BLM marches. The fact that BLM marches have justice on their side, as Trump demonstrators do not, does not diminish the goons’ First Amendment rights.
Joe Mullins’s Defamatory Attack on Eric Cooley
Ostensibly proposing a discussion about sexual predators and domestic violence abusers, Joe Mullins in a Facebook posting about his radio infomercial features a screenshot of Bill Cosby over one article, and the image of Flagler Beach City Commissioner Eric Cooley over another, implying an equivalence.
How Flagler County’s Drunken-Sailor, All-Republican Commissioners Tried to Con You Into a Higher Tax
The Flagler County Commission’s attempt unilaterally to impose an increase in the sales tax is the latest example of a lazy, bumbling commission addicted to spending, deceptive in its methods and indifferent to the long-term public interest.
Critical Rage Theory
Critical race theory has been around almost 50 years and went mainstream 25 years ago, but Trumpist Republicans are discovering it only now, passing laws in several states to ban the teaching of critical race theory without understanding the first thing about it, but proving with every ban that it is less theory than fact.
After Holland
The resignation of Milissa Holland and the coming special election for mayor puts Palm Coast at a forking path between the course Holland set and a more radical change in a different direction. The two views seem to be represented by Alan Lowe and David Alfin, the leading contenders for the seat.
‘Enough’ Is Not Enough: Flagler’s Dangerous Leer at Extremism
What happened on Tuesday at the Palm Coast City Council is indefensible and dangerous. But it’s nothing new. We’ve simply not been paying attention to a perilous degradation of public discourse and behavior. We are slowly becoming a crueler community debased by primitive instincts, because no one in charge, or too few people in charge, are standing up and saying enough.
What Stolen Election Diehards Owe Holocaust Deniers
Holocaust denialism’s dregs on the fringe don’t get much attention because responsible institutions from publishers to campuses to media organizations kept them in their gutter. Election deniers are owed no less.
Stop Trash-Talking the Unemployed
Misinformation and distortions by businesses and some politicians, echoed by media, are blaming the unemployed for staying home to live on government checks. The evidence says otherwise, though belittling workers and lampooning government is part of the continuing war against better wages and stronger worker-safety protections.
The Odious Victor Barbosa
An examination of Palm Coast Councilman Victor Barbosa’s accusation of “corruption” against Manager Matt Morton reveals it to be baseless and defamatory, while Barbosa’s own methods, from trying to get city employees fired, meddling in administrative business, blindsiding the council and shaming of residents in the city’s name, raise questions about his own understanding of, or fitness for, the job.
Lysenko, Stalin and Trump
On the one-year mark of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump’s malicious, politically motivated anti-science handling of a calamity that has killed more than half a million Americans so far recalls the alliance between fake Soviet scientist Trofim Lysenko and Stalin, which led to the death of millions.
The Golden Rule Is Not Cancel Culture
The Dr. Seuss estate’s decision to pull six books from reprints has nothing to do with cancel culture. That pair of terms has become its own dogmatic dumbbell anyway. Our misplaced nostalgia for books we were so fond of isn’t more important than the golden rule of looking out for our neighbors, to whom the same nostalgia translates as insult or put-down.
Addiction Is Not a Crime. The Drug War Is.
To continue with our cruel and sadistic drug war is the daily crime. The only way out is to decriminalize all drugs, treat, repair and, somehow, atone for lawmakers’ and the judicial system’s half-century assault on their own citizens.
Joe Biden’s Inauguration, and Amanda Gorman’s Beacon
President Joe Biden’s moving and restorative inauguration was upstaged by Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, whose words reflected the unvanquished voice of the American we idealize, the possible and the impossibly scaled in this country of the “battered and beautiful.”
Sedition Is Not a 1st Amendment Right, and There’s No Comparison With BLM Marches
Mob participants claim they were only exercising their First Amendment right to protest, and that Black Lives Matter protests and riots didn’t draw the same scrutiny. Both narratives are factual and moral frauds that hide behind liberal rationales to perpetrate reactionary lies and justify the unconscionable.
Trump’s Fascism and Republican Responsibility
By the time Trump was spitting sedition and inciting violence Wednesday he’d had five years of encouragement from the same Republican charlatans who would later stand on the floors of the Senate and the House to declare themselves shocked, shocked that the rioters they’d courted had desecrated and bloodied their little sanctum.
On WNZF, Flagler County Commissioner Joe Mullins Calls for Beheading Liberals
A few minutes into his latest weekly infomercial on WNZF radio Saturday morning, Joe Mullins, the Flagler County commissioner, called for the beheading of liberals while decrying responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Trump’s Suicide Bomber Act
Liberals would be fools to think the election was a turning point. The next four years will be as much a trial of democracy as the last four, just more diffuse, the cancer cells of Trumpism poisoning states and localities, as we’ve already seen locally in the last couple of years. Not the America we know? If you’ve been paying attention since 1980, it’s exactly the America we know.
Who’s Afraid of a $15 Minimum Wage?
Forget assumptions. Forget fear-mongering PR releases chambered in baseless claims that a $15 minimum wage will cost jobs. When the most extensive analysis on the subject shows 20 times more people will live better than lose jobs, it’s case closed.
To My Trump Neighbors
Can Biden and Trump neighbors drink with each other? Come Nov. 3, there’s room for a toast–not to either candidate necessarily, but to the election, to democracy, and to what endures. Presidents don’t. Neighbors do.
The Polls Aren’t Wrong. But Trump Can Still Win More Easily Than in 2016.
Biden’s lead in none of the key battleground states is outside the margin of error and national polling is only reflecting the concentration of Biden votes in already-blue states, and the migration of some Trump votes in still-red states. The polls have it right, but Trump’s road to re-election is actually less daunting than presumed.
The Bigotry Behind Judge Barrett’s Judicial Hijab
We don’t have to imagine what Amy Barrett’s jurisprudence will look like regarding gay rights, abortion, women’s rights, sex discrimination, even human rights and the separation of church and state. Reactionaries can party like it’s Deuteronomy again.
I Endorse Jacinda Ardern
What country of 5 million has 300 fewer overall coronavirus cases than Flagler County, seven fewer covid-related deaths and zero mendacious elected officials who pat themselves on the back in the face of infections, suffering and cavalier attitudes?
Heroes
If Flagler County had a Nobel Prize, Flagler Health Department Chief Bob Snyder and Dr. Stephen Bickel, the medical director there, would have won it this year for their management of the coronavirus pandemic, absurd claims against them notwithstanding.
Flagler Schools’ Sophie’s Choice
Flagler County and Florida schools are reopening not because it’s safe, but because ideological debauchery or anti-science vigilantism are forcing them to, even though alternatives are in place for safe and effective education.
In Good Shape? If Flagler Were Its Own Country, We’d Have the 10th Worst Covid Rate in The World
Flagler County officials often speak triumphantly of the county’s lower covid numbers compared to the rest of the state. It’s a deceptive and reckless comparison that denies the severity of the local pandemic when placed in its proper context.
Beirut’s Object Lesson of Weaponized Incompetence
The blast that leveled huge swaths of Beirut Tuesday was the result of years of criminal negligence and serves as an object lesson in government incompetence and indifference to public safety–not just in Lebanon.
Make Masks Mandatory Anywhere Public
As Covid-19 infections continue to surge, Palm Coast, Flagler County and all other local governments should do what Orange and Osceola counties have already done: make masks mandatory anywhere public, including shops and restaurants.
Jim Tager’s and Janet McDonald’s Tweets Bisected the Flagler School Board. McDonald Won.
If School Superintendent Jim Tager left this week, it’s not because he had to–he amassed an excellent record–but because the School Board let just one of its members–Janet McDonald–drive him out. It’s an unsettling precedent.
The “Chinese Virus” Slur
Calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus” has nothing to do with geographical correctness and everything to do with ideological motives tapping into a century and a half of anti-Asian bigotry.
Food Drops Are Not Enough. Expand Food Stamps Programs Now.
Big food drops like Palm Coast’s effort to feed 5,000 families are fine, but only an expanded SNAP (or food stamps) program can reach all families in need with an existing system that also acts as an economic stimulus for local business.
DeSantis Is Right on Cautious Reopening, Wrong on Models
Gov. Ron DeSantis took a wisely cautious approach on reopening, but his caution contrasted with his ridicule of models that predicted grim outcomes for Florida in March. His criticism reflects a simplistic misunderstanding of models’ purpose, especially when they have their intended effect: to minimize loss of life.
How Many Deaths Can We Live With?
The coronavirus emergency is raising ethical questions as communities reopen: how many deaths are we willing to live with, and whose deaths? The questions are at the heart of the debate on reopening, but are not being confronted honestly.
American Carnage: How Donald Trump Is Killing Us
The coronavirus has mutated into ideological variants. We are moving from a natural disaster to a man-made one, from statistically unavoidable deaths to deaths willed by indifference, ignorance, selfishness, and the political calculations of a single man. The consequences will compound rather than mitigate the pandemic.
HIPAA Heist: Lethal Privacy In the Age of Coronavirus
Misapplications and misinterpretations of the federal medical privacy law known as HIPAA are conspiring to kill more of us than otherwise would die from the coronavirus. And officials are taking advantage of the law to cloak their failures.
Covidnotes: Voyager
If it’s perspective we’re looking for in the age of coronavirus, we could do worse than looking to Voyager 1 and 2, emissaries from Florida in another century, whose language and distance remind us of our random place in the universe.
Half-Measures Harm: Lock-Down Flagler and Florida Now. Test Everyone.
The only option to buy time and minimize coronavirus deaths until universal testing is available is to enforce a lock-down, without which voluntary half-measures will only prolong harm to the economy and increase the death toll.
Coronavirus Prevention Is Not Overreaction: Flagler Schools Should Extend Spring Break
With the coronavirus and its many knowns and unknowns, what may look like an overreaction today is the most effective form of prevention, and should not be given the chance to look like playing catch-up weeks from now.
Flagler Politicians, Take Note: Brevard Taxpayers Just Paid $490,000 to Settle Illegal Christian Prayers at Meetings
Just as Flagler County commissioners started proffering prayers at public meetings, as the school board almost did, the Brevard County Commission paid out $490,000 in a settlement for doing so illegally for years.
The School Board’s Proposed Decorum Rules Are a Pretext to Silence Critical Information
The Flagler County School Board is considering speech restrictions at its meetings that include comment cards before a person can speak and prohibiting references to staff, students or anyone in the district.
The Florida Lottery Exploits a Racist Stereotype
The Florida Lottery just issued a 30-second television spot that exploits a bigoted stereotype–the African-American with oversized lips–themed around making the black patient’s teeth “100 times whiter.”