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

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People will die

By Flavius on Wed, 06/10/2015 - 11:48pm |

if the Court rules against the Administration  in King vs Burwell.

There are all sorts of estimates so let's make our own.

There are 10 million  Obamacare users who didn't have insurance before and they'll once again won't have insurance. Some of them are going to have a life threatening condition in the next two years that would have been treated but won't be now.

How many?Let's say 5%.

Some of those 500 K souls will scrape up the money somehow and get better. But lots of them won't .Maybe half.

Dennis Hastert

By Flavius on Thu, 05/28/2015 - 11:33pm |

In 1964 ,John Profumo, UK Secretary of Defense -and husband of the beautiful Valerie Hobson- was having an affair with the equally beautiful , lower class, 16 year old Christine Keeler,. Who was also having sex with a senior  Russian diplomat stationed in London!

When the Labour party leader ,Harold Wilson, disembarked at Heathrow he was mobbed by screaming reporters asking  for his comment.His entire reply was

"No comment........in technicolor"

Which  should be our reply if asked about Hastert  .Though I fear it won't be..

Free Trade

By Flavius on Fri, 05/22/2015 - 11:03pm |

Definition: Things get made where it's cheapest.

Result. US workers don't make them.

Long term effect: they starve.

Well,the Government won't let that happen, you think.

Just another day at the office

By Flavius on Sun, 05/17/2015 - 10:52pm |

".....I was at home in Newton on the morning of Sunday, March 20,2005, when I received notification that the House would convene later that same day to consider the case of a Florida woman named Terri Schiavo.Fifteen years earlier,she had fallen into a comatose state. Once it became clear  her condition would not improve, her husband asked the hospital to remove her feeding tube. This was in accordance with a wish he said she had expressed to him before she was stricken.

The UK Tory victory has been greeted

By Flavius on Sat, 05/09/2015 - 10:42pm |

here by a very old and very wrong assessment of  Labour's  economic performance. Krugman-of course- and a few others rebut it but it's become the accepted story.

 

A short hand way to portray what was actually the truth is to look at the deficits- and occasional surpluses- of the two main UK parties.

They're essentially the same.

For example

Labour            Average Deficit          Tories   Average Deficit       

1975-78          (6)Billion    

                                                            1979-87       (9)

UK Vote

By Flavius on Thu, 05/07/2015 - 2:00pm |

Time     Con    Lab    Lib  Scots   UKIP    Other                                                                              

                                                                                          

12 40     145       157     6     52        1                         

12 49     154       166     6     53        1

12 55  '   165        174    6     53        1       12

1 10       179        180     6     53       1        12

1 15       191       187      6     54       1        12

So let's do something about it.

By Flavius on Wed, 04/29/2015 - 10:25pm |

When I got to my unit, we were still in tents waiting for the Russians to go back to barracks. Almost the first thing my battery commander told me was, "Truman forced through the integration of the Army. In the long run it'll be good for the country but right now it’s bad for the Army."

But as those integrated units actually went into combat later: in Vietnam or the Middle East, their integrated nature hasn't seemed to seriously degrade their effectiveness. Or at least not to the extent that anyone now advocates un-integrating them.

Iran

By Flavius on Wed, 04/22/2015 - 12:56am |

The Dagblog world has been essentially silent about the Laussane "agreement" and IMHO properly so. To some extent possibly because as always  the devil is in the details. But,perhaps even more,because in this case those of us who hang out here know that the remaining devil(s) may be lurking in the details that we don't know about because they haven't yet been agreed.

Great Scott

By Flavius on Sun, 04/12/2015 - 11:08pm |

I first formed an opinion about Scott Ritter in the early 90s based on some network’s clip  showing him--then a UN arms inspector--arguing with some of his Iraqi contacts.  Poorly... Fitting every part of the role of the Ugly American.

Some years later he spoke at some local hall and I went. In the flesh he was an improvement.

That was the last I thought about him until the Huffington Post last week headlined those  comments of his on Lausanne which I linked to in Caviar anyone? I recommend taking a look at that link. Whichever side you’re on, Ritter raises issues which should be dealt with  although he himself, like me, seems  pro Lausanne. 

Caviar anyone?

By Flavius on Fri, 04/10/2015 - 8:54am |

One non-argument against "Lausanne":is that we are giving up sanctions and not getting enough in return. Sanctions aren't good in themselves.The opposite is true. To the extent they have any effect at all they're a self inflicted wound..They're a source  at the very least of annoyance to many Iranians and a loss of some export opportunities for us.And even some import opportunities. Caviar anyone?

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