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

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I was thinking of George Steinbrenner

By Flavius on Thu, 09/14/2017 - 11:34pm |

tonight,  I used to escape from the Cross  Bronx onto the GW at 8 something in the  morning.   Back when  Steinbrenner used to fire Billy Martin every  other weekend;  Or so it seemed, What did Reggie say? "One's a liar and the other's convicted?" Something like that.

After one of those G &B  ( I started to write S&M and thought " No") reconciliations the Y's  had the clever idea of using the enormous bill board looking down on the bridge from the Palisades: Photo of Martin from behind in uniform:  caption underneath:

Keep the monuments

By Flavius on Fri, 08/18/2017 - 5:41pm |

but provide the full story.

Their existence is in effect a message the honoree was a brilliant performer. What's missing is that it was on behalf of an evil cause.

Leave them.Just add  the rest of the story.For example

              General Robert E. Lee

   Who struggled to keep millions in misery

        

 

 

 

 

    

Second Thoughts on "Three Myths"

By Flavius on Wed, 08/09/2017 - 8:43am |

I started this as a comment on Dr. Cleveland's brilliant piece but it goes in a sufficiently different direction that I decided it would be hijacking "Three Myths ".

This will be taken as an affront by many of  but my reaction to the unfairness of a "legacy" taking the spot at ,say , Tulane that should have gone to a deserving minority  is like JFK's famous remark in a different context: "Life isn't fair".

Without question everyone should have an education.

And on the 7th day...

By Flavius on Sun, 08/06/2017 - 11:01pm |

Unemployment % 

1929   3.2        2007    5.0       sub prime band was playing *

1930   8.7        2008    7.3       Paulsen kneels before Nancy Pelosi

1931 15.9        2009     9.9      GM, Chrysler,AIG and the world, saved

1932 23.6        2010     9.3      Obamacare passed in "Reconciliation"

1933 24.9        2011     8.5    

 1934 21.7       2012     7.9

1935 20.1       2013     6.7

1936 16.9       2014     5.6

1937 14.3      2015      5.0

1938  19.0     2016      4.7

McCain was a hero. Again

By Flavius on Fri, 07/28/2017 - 6:27am |

The Republican attempt to kill Obamacare was instead killed by John McCain last night.

Shortly before midnight McConnell presented the latest of his many attempts to replace Obamacare. The exact details don't matter because the intention was to pass a bill, any bill, in order to create a vehicle with which to set the stage for a House/Senate conference. With Collins and Murkowski standing firm McConnell needed all the other Republicans.

The first letter in

By Flavius on Mon, 07/10/2017 - 1:46am |

the July 9 Times begins, sadly, …..”.Bret Stephens...starts off promisingly…...He cites…... Kenneth Arrow about how insurance discourages people from shopping around”

Why “Sadly” ?

Because this  demonstrates that  Stephens - the relatively  new  Times opeder  recruit, presumably intended   to bolster its insufficiently conservative bull pen-  got away with a shoddy journalistic trick.   

The second worst failure in

By Flavius on Tue, 07/04/2017 - 8:33am |

Bret Stephens' Saturday Times Oped was his * falsely reporting the supposed  content of this  reference 

"Kenneth  Arrow crisply described  the biggest insanity (Stephens ' word, not Arrow's) back in December 1963 "Insurance " he wrote "removes the incentive on the part of individuals, patients, and physicians to shop around for better prices for hospitalization and surgical care."  

Arrow himself would  not have categorized  this as the" biggest insanity" in health care since he went on to state that 

"When I use a word "

By Flavius on Fri, 06/23/2017 - 9:55am |

 Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

As we were coming

By Flavius on Wed, 06/07/2017 - 8:34am |

back from the library ,across the icy Ft. Dix parade ground , I asked J why he wasn´t going to officer candidate school. I was.And he seemed to me  far more qualified. I´d had a good enough education at a college no one had ever heard of then or since..He´d been a star at Oberlin.  And by any standards he was a commanding  personality. I mostly sat on the floor by my bunk reading. At that point  ¨The God that failed¨ which J had in fact loaned me.

He answered. ¨I don´t know whether I can handle combat and if I fail I don´t want to be responsible for anyone other than me.¨

What do the numbers tell us?

By Flavius on Sat, 06/03/2017 - 10:30am |

During the period  Orion and artappraiser discuss in their interesting   adjacent blogs something else happened.

US Unemployment %

Feb 2008    4.9

Feb 2009    8.3

Oct 2009   10.0 

Feb 2012    8.3

Feb  2015  5.5

Some unemployment level is pretty much painless. ¨Frictional¨ . People who´ve just left one job and are quite happy to take a break.

Statisticians know the number,I don´t.    But let´s say it´s at @3%.  So the swing in ¨involuntary¨ unemployment was from

1.9% in Feb 08 to

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