PRAGUE, Okla. ? Funerals, like weddings, can be messy family affairs. Not everything goes according to plan. Emotions run high. Even pleasant people can be tense.
Few people who met Patsy Thorpe ? third and most difficult spouse of Jim Thorpe, that primordial American athlete ? accused her of being pleasant, in particular Thorpe?s children from previous marriages.
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TAMPA ? ???Scuse me, guys, ?scuse me,? Ron Kaufman, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney, said as he led Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R) through a crowd of VIPs and past a shoulder-height stogie to a private room marked Diamond Crown Cigar Lounge. The sanctum, filled with smoke and power brokers six floors above the convention floor, is the site of Kaufman?s private Republican party.
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DOSWELL, Va.? Before bankers make a big deal, they like to run something called a Monte Carlo. It is named for the city in Monaco and its gambling houses, and it works like this: The lenders plug in the numbers and variables of a deal, then run a series of complex computer simulations to see what can go wrong. The fewer avenues to failure, the more confidence there is in a project?s success.
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The giant Pacific octopus at the National Zoo was spending time, as she occasionally does, draped in a dim corner of her tank like a wad of dishrags. The octopus, Pandora, has tentacles several feet long and is the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, and she often hangs out at the front of her tank, unscrolling around the glass. But she is an expert at camouflage, and against the rocks at the rear she can be only faintly visible. It was 3 o?clock on a recent afternoon, her feeding time, and a crowd was straining for a glimpse of her. ?Where?s the octopus?? a boy asked, pressing his brow against the tank, his eyes a few inches from hers. Suddenly, a zoo volunteer rose above the back of the tank, backlit, holding a long feeding stick, and lowered a piece of shrimp into the water. In a flash, Pandora shot from her perch and flung herself upon the shrimp; she flushed a bright red, inflated and rippling in the water, like a predatory prom dress. From the rear of the crowd, a keeper deftly narrated the action: ?That?s the jet hop, the ballooning behavior right there. You see those very subtle color changes, the texture change ? they can voluntarily change the color and texture of their skin. ...? a monologue drowned out at intervals by the gasps of the crowd.
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TAMPA ? For all the talk of party conventions as defining moments in presidential campaigns, the one that wrapped up Thursday night in Tampa underscored the degree to which they have become an outdated and ostentatious exercise of limited political value.
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Dead on. ?Paul Ryan?s acceptance speech was a tour de force, and a clear success. One measure of that success is the intensity and emptiness of the attacks coming his way. The irony is that these attacks ? intended to damage Ryan by undermining his credibility ? are more likely to be seen by the electorate for what they really are: desperate and dishonest tactics from those willing to say and do anything to hang on to power.?
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TAMPA
Two stark facts about presidents and the likability factor: In every presidential election since at least 1984, the candidate viewed as more likable won. Indeed, if current numbers hold, Mitt Romney would be the least popular person elected in that time.
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The ?Jersey Shore? has passed away at the age of 3 years and 6 seasons, a demise that was not unexpected but happened when the MTV reality series was still relatively young. To be fair though, it drank a lot. So it was only a matter of time before its liver gave out.
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