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

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The breakfast club

By Flavius on Mon, 12/09/2013 - 11:43am |

Perhaps  10 years ago listening to an interview with BishopTutu, the host asked him whether Mandela ever saw Helen Suzsman now that they were both retired from active politics.

He laughed and said "Every Sunday morning he phones her and asks whether she's thinking of making pan cakes today."

A nice memory

 

    

 

Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered

By Flavius on Sat, 11/23/2013 - 8:44am |

If the Republicans had contented themselves with blocking only one of Obama's nominees for that Washington appeals court they'd have gotten away with it. By blocking all three they went too far. And, given the number of vacancies,put Obama in a position to appoint enough new judges to make a significant improvement in how our laws are interpreted.

 

Not a show stopper

By Flavius on Thu, 11/14/2013 - 10:34pm |

The insurance industry is shedding a lot of customers/policies that aren't quite profitable enough .Not hopeless "dogs"or they would have shed them long ago.

I ask myself "what could make all those policies profitable." And the answer  is.......... 'put them in one pile'. We know that the way insurance  works is that insuring against just one risk is....... risky even tho insuring against 5 thousand of such risks would make sense.

That's called taking advantage of the "law of averages". Or better "being an underwriter"

All together now

By Flavius on Wed, 10/16/2013 - 4:33am |

The White House must take control of the Obamacare registration process.

Rather than 'first come first not served' it should impose some sort of "rationing": perhaps this Friday only applicants whose names begin with "A" Monday the B's , etc until the demand shrinks sufficiently .

Hmn?

By Flavius on Tue, 09/24/2013 - 6:25am |

This is the first pan -or attempted pan-of Janet Yellen I've read. It was in Brad Delong . More below

The news from all over

By Flavius on Fri, 09/20/2013 - 12:54pm |

 

"All the momentum is in our direction. Warren Buffett said yesterday, ‘Scrap the bill.’ ………. Everyone knows this thing isn’t ready. Everyone knows,” said Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a former Republican Study Committee chairman…………..

And the winner is...

By Flavius on Mon, 09/09/2013 - 9:54pm |

Who cares ?

The debate over the Russian proposal for Syria reminds me of a season in the early 80s. With a week to go the Yankees were as usual in the lead. But during that week they "mailed in" their performances and they didn't finally clinch until the last weekend.

Reporter.

Some people are saying you backed into the pennant

Thurman Munson

They'll be saying that from second place. 

All together now

By Flavius on Tue, 09/03/2013 - 6:57am |

killing people is wrong. Since I get lost trying to follow complicated debates I  need some “golden thread”to hang on to. That’s it.

Sure there’s the usual suspects: Are we being lied to by the Administration? What does the Constitution permit?  Should we take sides with al-Qaeda? Does the “norm” with respect to chemical warfare trump all other considerations ?

Tomorrow I’ll have eloquent comments on all the above. Unless I decide to go to the beach. Today I’m just trying to decide what’s right.

Killing people isn’t.

285 to 272

By Flavius on Fri, 08/30/2013 - 8:20am |

was the vote in the House of Commons against the UK supporting military action against Syria in response to the use of chemical war fare measures allegedly by the regime.

Cameron immediately responded essentially that while he disagreed with this implied instruction of the  House  he was required to be guided by it.

The response from Obama's spokesmen is that we do what we think is right.

Three way of looking at a blackbird (ten more to go)

By Flavius on Sat, 07/27/2013 - 3:15pm |

 

OBAMA ON THE ECONOMY IN GALESBURG: STUBBORN POWER OF FALSE NEO-AUSTRIAN NARRATIVES WEBLOGGING

Obama turns neo-Austrian:

Towards the end of those three decades, a housing bubble, credit cards, and a churning financial sector kept the economy artificially juiced up. But by the time I took office in 2009, the bubble had burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, their homes, and their savings. The decades-long erosion of middle-class security was laid bare for all to see and feel.

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