A beautiful song for an equally beautiful Sunday morning. The singing is simply gorgeous.
Enjoy the music but most of all enjoy your day.?
29 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”
Comments are closed.
User-Supported News Commentary Hosted by Craig Crawford
for the curious about “Casta Diva”amongst us
provided by thoughtco:
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett on Saturday appeared to fault U.S. President Donald Trump for taking too much credit for the nation’s economic growth, while acknowledging that market conditions are making it tough for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc to find more big companies to buy.
Buffett lamented these states of affairs in his widely read annual letter to Berkshire shareholders.
Accompanying the letter was more bad news, that sinking stock prices and a big writedown for the company’s Kraft Heinz Co investment fueled a $25.39 billion fourth-quarter net loss, and caused Berkshire to post its lowest annual profit since 2001.
But many of Berkshire’s more than 90 businesses, such as the Geico auto insurer and BNSF railroad, performed well, and quarterly operating profit rose 71 percent.
Buffett uses his shareholder letters to focus on Berkshire’s operating businesses, tout the strength of the U.S. economy, and criticize thinking and business practices that get in the way.
The 88-year-old said Berkshire’s success has been in part a product of “the American tailwind” that has enabled the country to enjoy “almost unbelievable prosperity.”
He said that since he began investing in 1942, that prosperity has been overseen by seven Republican and seven Democratic presidents, through times of war and financial crisis, and gained in a bipartisan manner.
Trump often takes credit for upbeat news on the economy and stock market, sometimes tying them to his economic policies.
Buffett, who supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in her 2016 White House run, said no one person should claim credit when things go well.
“It is beyond arrogance for American businesses or individuals to boast that they have ‘done it alone,’” Buffett wrote.
Buffett also made a possible oblique criticism of Trump’s bragging about U.S. economic performance, including relative to other countries such as China, where Berkshire invests in electric car maker BYD Co.
The United States, according to Buffett, should “rejoice” when other countries have bright futures.
“Americans will be both more prosperous and safer if all nations thrive,” he wrote. “At Berkshire, we hope to invest significant sums across borders.”
[continues]
Gorgeous piece, Jace.
Well was this predictable?
Wapo reports that SFB is trying to Lower expectations for the upcoming SFB-Un “summit”.
Typical BS from our “president “. He’ll define success as whatever the hell agreement or lack thereof comes out of distraction trip to chat with one of his favorite dictators.
pogo, high expectations however for what he’ll do to distract from the upcoming Michael Cohen show on Wednesday. expect things like mooning Moon, planting a big kiss on kim and otherwise becoming the brighter shiny bling for the media that day.
Lovely Jace. Many thanks to you guys for keeping the trail rolling.
Got the old lady power-washed yesterday. looking proud. finish interior painting and carpet this week, on track to list in early March. I’ll be scraping off wallpaper all day today, my least favorite task so far.
I had this brilliant idea to visit a friend in Arizona this summer. But she just moved to Northern Virginia, about 25 miles outside of DC. So, if everything works out, I’m hoping to visit that area in early April. I haven’t been to Virginia/Washington DC since I was 17 years-old. Fingers crossed everything works out!
*
Corey – a few of us live in the D.C. region and would be happy to have a roundup.
vox has a different take on the amy-is-a-bad-boss stories today:
The suspiciously sexist views of Amy Klobuchar’s management style, explained
Klobuchar tops “the worst boss in Congress” list. Right in front of six other female senators.
[long intro about the different complaints against amy’s mgmt. style ]
Imagine, for a moment, that comb-gate didn’t involve Klobuchar, but a different politician on a plane in 2008. John McCain’s short fuse was no secret. But if he’d gotten mad at a staffer who gave him lunch with no way to eat it, would it be the opening to a New York Times story over a decade later? Probably not.
Some critics of the coverage say this disparity amounts to sexism. But it’s not just that we don’t hear as much about how men treat their staff. It’s that the same kind of behavior that damages women is can benefit a man. He’s not a devil wearing Prada. He’s a devil to admire.
Consider some examples of male politicians who were able to use the kind of negative qualities associated with Klobuchar to their advantage:
As former Hillary Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri wrote for Politico Magazine in response to the Klobuchar coverage, male politicians have built themselves up around behavior that would be a problem for a woman. She pointed out that Bill Clinton was notorious for his “purple rage,” but it was just seen as demanding — a sign he means business.
[…]
The most concrete data point that appears in almost all of these stories comes from a survey of staff turnover by Senate office from 2001 to 2016. It’s called “the worst boss” list. Klobuchar topped it. (She slipped to third-worst in the 2018 version, a point cited far less frequently.)
The rest of the list is interesting. Of the top 10 “worst bosses” in the Senate in 2016, seven were women and just three were men. At the time, then, about a third of female senators were worse bosses than nearly 96 percent of all male senators. That could be objectively true. Or maybe there’s something else going on.
[…]
Philosopher Kate Manne offers a way to consider this dynamic in her book Down Girl, the Logic of Misogyny. Manne argues that when a woman steps out of her expected role of “caretaker,” she’s attacked. In Klobuchar’s case, her critics describe a boss who expects them to put her work and her ambitions first. She is not concerned with their feelings, clearly. She is not going to hold their hand through writing a policy brief or a press release. She expects them to do excellent work — for her.
We do not expect a man to put others first, certainly not a powerful politician. Assertiveness, decisiveness and command of others are all considered positive qualities. These fit the role men are expected to play in the same patriarchal system that punishes women for stepping out of their expected role.
Wonderful Jace –although it is not a lovely day here –gray and drippy
Short version of the Vox article- it’s okay for men to be angry assholes to their staff but it’s not okay for women to be angry assholes to theirs. How insane. Is that misogynistic? Well, duh.
I have a friend who is a doctor. He lives in Germantown, Md. I contacted him yesterday as well.
Goops are trying to brand the Dems as so far left they have fallen out of the party and become –oh no socialists.
So if we are going to brand political parties — shouldn’t the goops be facists?
Amy doesn’t compare to blake farenthold. Or, to the trent franks, who wanted a staffer to bear his child. They weren’t in the same universe let alone the same league.
repub’s don’t want us to think trump is a bad boss.
“Hey, you. I need you to commit treason. NOW! “
oy vey
This is the same kind of thing they tried with Pelosi – the goops are corrupt, lazy and stupid if they think this is going to work.
Most people think medical care should be available to everyone.
kgc, love that cartoon. ohh the angry tweets andy marlette (who’s lives and works in north florida, the heart of trumpland ) will have to endure because of it.
dem primary – a cast of thousands
NYT: Mayor de Blasio Returns to Iowa, Playing the Role of Coy Presidential Aspirant
I say the more the merrier!
And let’s stop judging campaigns and candidates on the size of their crowds and more on the content of their message.
Let’s not be Republicans
I’ve been thinking a lot about why Trump won. I supported Clinton both times and I think she was targeted by the goopers for 30 + years. But in the end — he didn’t win she lost. And of course, there is the cheating and denying the right of fully qualified voters to their ballots. They were able to make her thoroughly unlikeable and untrustworthy. Bill being Bill didn’t help. And Trump was lying about Clinton constantly and every once in a while he would stumble on to something and that gave greater credibility to the rest of his lies.
The bottom line is in the end people did not like her for whatever reasons. I was reminded of all this with the stories about Senator Feinstein disrespecting children who had come to see her about the green new deal
I am appalled.
https://www.rt.com/usa/452216-feinstein-children-climate-change/
Our breakfast room wall paper removed & ready for paint, our realtor Maria and me still working on kitchen tonight. Saving money prepping walls for painter ourselves, his estimate didn’t include wallpaper removal in these rooms because we thought he could just paint over it but condition not good enough. (Wall with gouge marks on the right in pic was my trainer wall, got much better with Maria’s guidance).
craig, any chance you and maria will be able to have the Oscars on in the background to make the stripping go by faster? nothing like some boring thank yous and screw ups to lessen burden of boring labor.
Fraid not Pat. Disconnected DirecTV last week. Getting this house to market is my only focus 24/7. I’m living on the porch like a homeless person even though I own the home.
Jace, both magnificent and appropriate, Thank you for our Sunday tradition.
KGC it is a shame those adults manipulated those children in their meeting with Feinstein. There can be programming and brainwashing on both sides. DIFi has a 100% voting record on environmental issues. She didn’t deserve the purity police coming after her with a talking points memo about goals rather than specific achievable policies.
Wallpaper stripping. Bane of my existence. I bet I’ve stripped an acre of wallpaper off walls in our last 4 houses. A friend had a house that one room had wallpaper that even after scoring, soaking and steaming came off in pieces the size of postage stamps. It was insane.
Queen with Adam Lambert did a decent opening, but no one has ever replaced Freddie Mercury. Paul Rogers did a credible job but even he couldn’t pull it off. Adam Lambert, less so.
I heard that snippet of kids grilling DiFi. I agree with you Jamie.
Jaime
I think it was when she said — you didn’t vote for me – …that set people off
Anyway she has called for a mulligan
i once posted how to make a hi-def TV antenna out of a potato, if you had been paying attention! i’ve tested the design, works great- oh, well.
(Yes, you could have eaten the potato after the broadcast, preferably after cooking. i’ve eaten potatoes, they are good- oh, well.)
new thread