The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Outrage and Inner Peace

    By Verified Atheist on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 4:17pm |

    A friend of mine once said to me:

    There's a fine line between contentment and complacency.

    Now, my friend's point was meant as an argument against being complacent, but I happen to think it cuts both ways. It's been decades since I was a teenager, and over that time I've worked more and more on establishing inner peace, and as a result I am a more peaceful man.

    Am I too peaceful? Maybe so.

    Barth's picture

    Things to Think About

    By Barth on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 11:12am |

    No time to blog so, instead, just a few reminders of comments past and references to things you might find interesting:

    tmccarthy0's picture

    ADVICE TO OWS-EVERYWHERE! AGENDA: CONSTITUTIONIAL CONVENTION

    By tmccarthy0 on Sat, 10/15/2011 - 4:54pm |

    There comes a time in the life of a nation when it is time to make choices, how are we going to institute effective change and reform our badly broken government. We now have a Legislative Branch filled with spoiled schoolyard children, who would prefer to see the country slip past the point of no-return, where they would prefer their citizens to be destitute and desperate in order to gain more and more power.

    Ongoing Things That Piss Me Off

    By A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 10/15/2011 - 1:24pm |

     Because there are always a few such things every day, I will likely add to this as time goes by. Anyone who cares to is encouraged add to this list or discuss what they see here. Any subject is fair. Expect, for instance, a rant about justifiable road-rage directed at tailgaters or other idiots allowed to use public streets.
     First, but not worst, is my conditioned response every time I see the following:

     "Government sources speaking on the condition of anonymity revealed today that....."

    Rootman's picture

    Robots in the Back of the Bus

    By Rootman on Sat, 10/15/2011 - 8:52am |

    Heading to Occupy Miami and need my sign. Dan has a great concept with "Solidarity."

    My blighted neighborhood, when I was young, was visited weekly by the library bookmobile. The rear wall of the bus was shelves of science fiction, and I grew up with the great themes of literature and myth retold in short story form as pulp SF compilations.

    Man versus robots. The robotic servant turning on his masters. The retirement of humanity as robots ended human labor, and the dramatic consequences.

    Change "robots" to "corporations" and the 21st Century prophesy is fulfilled.

    Cain's 999 plan vs. Perry's "drill baby drill"

    By Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/14/2011 - 12:45pm |

    Rick Perry has just unveiled his "drill baby drill" plan, a plan to bring dirty oil to ourselves and perhaps have enough left over to sell to the the rest of the world. Perry wants to "Make what we make" , "Buy what we make" and "Sell what we make" to the rest of the world. Perhaps instead of "drill baby drill" Perry's plan could be described as the "Make, Make, Make" plan. or "Make, Buy and Sell" plan. In any event Perry's makeover has him positioned aside a simplistic plan well suited to his experience running an energy state and his inexperience in just about everything else. And Perry's plan is positioned just opposite Cain's 999 plan. Of course, neither of their plans is ever going to be implemented. The plans are a ruse for getting one or the other of these candidates through the primaries.

    Richard Day's picture

    BREAKING BADLY

    By Richard Day on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 7:12pm |

                  

                       HEIR TO ZSA ZSA GABOR

    Mitt's religion doesn't matter: Or, get ready for Wall Street's Koch-upation of America!

    By erica20 on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 4:50pm |

    Dag just posted a great and very logical piece about how Mitt Romney's Mormon beliefs will make it tough for him to get the Republican nomination, given the fact that voters tend to distrust Mormons and dislike Mitt. Although I see the point, I'm pretty sure Romney's Mormonism isn't going to make much difference in either the nomination race or the race for the presidency--unless the Dems decide to make an issue of it, which seems unlikely. Here's why.

    Johnny Hacktotum, 1955-2011

    By arc400 on Thu, 10/13/2011 - 12:44pm |

    "[Steve's] dad, Paul -- a machinist who had never completed high school -- had set aside a section of his workbench for Steve, and taught him how to build things, disassemble them, and put them together. From neighbors who worked in the electronics firm in the Valley, he learned about that field -- and also understood that things like television sets were not magical things that just showed up in one's house, but designed objects that human beings had painstakingly created." (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/jobs/all/1)

    The anecdote above is my favorite from the recent gush of biographical material regarding Steve Jobs. It gives us a picture of the young Jobs, encouraged by his adoptive dad to take gizmos apart and put them together again. (It even raises the question: If Jobs had grown up with his biological parents, would he have become a hacker?)

    coatesd's picture

    Trade Policy: Countering the Walmart Effect

    By coatesd on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 7:27pm |

    Bi-partisanship in Washington is rare these days, but it does occasionally surface. It did this week, when the Senate passed the “Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act”(S.1619) – the one sponsored by Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and co-sponsored by 22 other Senators, including five Republicans.[1] If ever passed by the House – the Senate vote in favor was 65 to 35, with 16 Republicans in support – the Act would allow affected American companies and workers to petition the Department of Commerce for countervailing import duties, to offset injury caused to them by the undervalued currency of a trading partner. It would also ease the criteria that the Treasury Department uses when adjudicating such petitions, with plaintiffs no longer obliged to demonstrate that any currency misalignment was the product of deliberate exchange rate manipulation.

    Obama's new best friends: SuperCommittee and Bush Tax Cuts.

    By Oxy Mora on Wed, 10/12/2011 - 9:32am |

    In last night's Republican debate Romney was the clear leader. The great hope of the Southern religious whites and Republican values voters in general, Rick Perry, was ineffectual, if not pitiful. Cain, the replacement Savior for Perry, has staked so much on the 999 plan, and the plan is so conceptually weak that I think he will fade.

    "Dear 1%..." Does there need to be more?

    By erica20 on Tue, 10/11/2011 - 7:51pm |

    I'm trying to write this quickly so I may make a mess of it but please bear with me...

    I was reading Synchronicity's post and also DanK's, and thinking about the critique that OWS doesn't have a unified message, etc.

    Here's what I came up with:

    "Dear 1%,

    We are not going to let you run our country based on the idea that shitty is the new fair.

    Thank you,

    The Other 99%"

     

    republican debate as A Cluster-pandering-muck-up.

    By Oxy Mora on Tue, 10/11/2011 - 4:52pm |

    I thought Bruce Bartlett on Bloomberg Radio earlier today gave a proper account of the lineup of candidates who will be "debating" tonight in Hanover, New Hampshire.

    "The Republican candidates are all just pandering to the Tea Party".

    Duncan Black to Brad Delong to you

    By Flavius on Mon, 10/10/2011 - 10:00am |

    Brad Delong tries to answer Black's question of why Obama has been maundering on about the long run deficit when that is not only not the problem but when pretending it is the problem makes it less likely that we'll fix the problem.

     

    Delong's best effort was to try and guess at what team Obama thought and it looked like this.

    Richard Day's picture

    THE MONSTER MASH: RON PAUL AND THE NEWT

    By Richard Day on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 5:25pm |

     

     

     

    I wish to get into the Monster Mash a little earlier this year.

    I intend on getting all over Ron Paul's arse but I need to discuss recent statements by Newt first.

    Newt has gone off the deep end recently so I shall deal with him first.

    Pikes are not allowed but tar is a dream come true

    By Oxy Mora on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 3:03pm |

    My 70 lb. Chesapeake Retriever jumped up on the bed sometime around midnight and we both had fitful nights. She had her legs stretched straight out and dreamed intermittently of chasing bad people and varmints from the yard, clawing my backside every thirty minutes. When I finally got out of bed and tripped over the round mattress where my dog is supposed to sleep an exit dream stayed lodged in my mind.

    Rootman's picture

    I Like Pikes

    By Rootman on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 9:47am |

    Dickens describes the post-Bastille populace parading through the City of Light with the head of Louis XVI's finance czar, Foulon de Doué, on a pike.

    "If those rascals have no bread, then let them eat hay," Foulon had famously said during a famine. Well-fed himself, he broke several ropes while being hung by the farmers and tradespeople of Paris, who resorted to a sidewalk beheading.

    Coulda,shoulda , woulda

    By Flavius on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 10:02pm |

     

    Ezra Klein thinks Obama could have handled the financial crisis better.

    He says so in many thousands of words

    If Romer, Summers et al had read their R& R (Reinhart and Rogoff),starved all other initiatives and rifle shot at a go-for- broke stimulus maybe unemployment would be 7% today instead of 9% (my words , not Klein's or RR's)

    And pigs could fly.

    miguelitoh2o's picture

    Breaking the Social Contract

    By miguelitoh2o on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 2:08pm |

    The natives are restless. We used to get to come into the castle when the marauders and pillagers arrived at the city’s walls in exchange for our support and defense of the realm. Not any longer. This war is being fought in the realm of ideas and promulgated by the plutocracy through their public relation branches, aka the MSM. The people have taken to the streets with amorphous discontent and amorphous demands. The only given is that they’re not going to go away.

    Red Planet to the rescue

    By Flavius on Fri, 10/07/2011 - 3:56pm |

    of my understandably unread blog on marginal tax rates. (Yawn)

    1952: tax table  Adjusted for Inflation

     

    Marginal Tax Rate: 

    22.2% up to $16.9K

    24.6% up to $33.9K

    David Brooks eulogizes the bygone Culture Clash.

    By Oxy Mora on Fri, 10/07/2011 - 1:34pm |

    Writing from a remote location and employing a pun that would embarrass a ninth grade writing class Brooks has managed to turn the memory of Steve Jobs's life into a commentary on innovation-less joblessness. 

    NYT Article: Where are the Jobs?(I have trouble even typing it) by David  Brooks.

    Richard Day's picture

    THE BIRTH OF THE HERO (A SERIES)

    By Richard Day on Thu, 10/06/2011 - 6:29pm |
    HERO WAS A GIRLY MAN!

    A hero (heroine is usually used for females) (Ancient Greek: ἥρως, hḗrōs), in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion.[1] Later, hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters who, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self sacrifice—that is, heroism—for some greater good of all humanity. This definition originally referred to martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.

    Republican debate Oct. 11 and Cain's 999 plan.

    By Oxy Mora on Wed, 10/05/2011 - 11:00pm |

    Returning to Hanover, New Hampshire yesterday following a 9 week hike down the Appalachian Trail I found the town and the Dartmouth campus overrun by politicians and media faces lifted from T.V. screens across the country. Satellite trucks jammed traffic. A PT Cruiser painted in orange script,  FEEL THE FLAMES BAPTIST MINISTRY, blared its horn. It looked like a circus.

    Our marginal tax rate is a moral hazard.

    By Flavius on Wed, 10/05/2011 - 12:40pm |

    The marginal tax rate was

    91% under Ike starting at $400,000

    70% from  Nixon to Carter, at $200,000

    28% under Reagan at  $300,000.

    40% under Clinton at $288,000. Which became 35%, under the famous Bush  tax cuts.

    (remind me why we can't afford social security!)

    If you were an AIG trader collecting $6 million in 2004 after taking a risk which might -and did- bankrupt your employer you'd have kept $3,900,000 to comfort you if your social security was inadequate. 

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