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

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Dateline: Madison, Wisconsin, Feb. 19, 2011

By SleepinJeezus on Sun, 02/20/2011 - 9:33am |

Just a few impressions of my time spent at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday

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"This is what democracy looks like!"

By SleepinJeezus on Sun, 02/20/2011 - 7:05am |

 

Capitol Rotunda 02-19-11 MegRothstein

The Capitol Building in Madison, Wisconsin has always been for me an inspiration. It's a stunning work of art fashioned from cold granite, and it makes of this unyielding material a very strong, yet welcoming edifice capable of embracing and even shaping the passions and aspirations of the people of Wisconsin. 

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American Strategists would have us inherit the winds that blow in Cairo

By SleepinJeezus on Fri, 02/04/2011 - 7:13pm |

I haven't seen any TV in a week, and have kept up with developments in Cairo via newspaper headlines and newscasts. Admittedly, this presented for me a "story among other news stories" kind of perspective on the matter.

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The Failure of a Thirty-Year Experiment in Reaganomics

By SleepinJeezus on Sun, 01/30/2011 - 8:54am |

Since the advent of Reaganomics, both Repubs and Dems have fully embraced supply-side, trickle-down economic policy as the course that would provide growth and prosperity for all Americans. Indeed, there was no greater advocate of this than Bill Clinton, who established NAFTA as the standard for our Free Trade policies.

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My Christmas of the Broken Wing

By SleepinJeezus on Sat, 12/25/2010 - 11:36am |

 Santa Claus was only one of the characters in the regular group of customers at my father’s tavern. This was a secret, however, that was kept from me. I knew him as Lemoyne Doucette, a house painter and a Frenchman of large girth and a robust laugh. His father had worked winters as a lumberjack in the northwoods and in one of the many sawmills in town during the summers. The lumbering boom had long since gone bust, and so Lemoyne had inherited little more from his father than a boyish sense of humor as well as a taste for good brandy.

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"Which Side Are You On, Boys?"

By SleepinJeezus on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 5:14pm |

Looks like the White House won the messaging wars.

Here's the lede to the tax cuts for the rich story as presented by MSNBC:

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"Hey, Washington! Are you listening?"

By SleepinJeezus on Fri, 12/10/2010 - 4:20pm |

Hedge fund managers and other millionaires really ain't where it's at. Honest!

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Dem Manifesto: Catfood Commission Report Underscores Need for Health Care Reform

By SleepinJeezus on Sat, 11/13/2010 - 2:49am |

The trial balloon floated by The Obama Deficit Commission co-chairs Simpson and Bowles has been afforded all the respect it deserves. In a statement following the release of the "chairman's mark," Dean Baker does as good a job as anyone in dismantling the report. Baker is perhaps most critical of the ludicrous timing of such a counter-intuitive, anti-stimulative initiative smack dab in the middle of the greatest recession in modern history.

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Dinesh D'Souza: Intellectual Coward

By SleepinJeezus on Sun, 10/31/2010 - 3:54am |

 

Dinesh D'Souza is afforded standing as one of the young gun intellectuals in the conservative movement. In this article from Forbes Magazine, he offers a psycho-analytical glimpse into Obama’s relationship with his father.

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Personal Information

Website
http://sleepinjeezus.posterous.com/
Favorite Quotes

"Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?" - Old Irish Saying

"We Can Be Together" - Jefferson Airplane

"Misery's the river of the world - everybody row!" - Tom Waits

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift

“If a man is not an oligarch, something is not right with him. Everyone had the same starting conditions, everyone could have done it.” - Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian Tycoon, now in prison.

 

"I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." - Jay Gould, 19th Century Industrialist
 

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck

Biography

I slept with the lions
and Marilyn Monroe
had breakfast in the eye
of a hurricane

fought Rocky Marciano,
played Minnesota Fats
burned hundred-dollar bills,
I've eaten Mulligan stew

got drunk with Louis Armstrong
what's that old song?
I taught Mickey Mantle
everything that he knows
-Tom Waits "Jitterbug Boy"

Location:
Somewhere in Wisconsin, at the junction of Principles and Opinion

Politics:
Progressive Liberal Socialist - Studs Terkel; Clarence Darrow; Bob LaFollette; Frank Zeidler; Eugene Debs; Joe Hill; Saul Alinsky; FDR New Deal; Henry Wallace; James Groppi; Catonsville 9; Harold Washington; Tip O'Neill; Ann Richards; Molly Ivins; Mahatma Ghandi; Mother Jones; Chalmers Johnson; Ed Garvey; Michael Moore

Favorite Books:
"The Jungle" - Upton Sinclair
"The Grapes of Wrath" - John Steinbeck
"Reveille for Radicals" - Saul Alinsky
"Clarence Darrow for the Defense" - Irving Stone
"Ironweed" - William Kennedy
"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" - Carson McCullers
"The Glass Menagerie" - Tennessee Williams
"The Last Lion" trilogy (unfinished) - William Manchester
"Moby Dick" - Herman Melville
"Great Expectations" - Charles Dickens
"A River Runs Through It" - Norman MacLean
"The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany" - Willliam L. Shirer
"Trout Fishing in America" / "Revenge of the Lawn" - Richard Brautigan
"TRUCK" / "COOP" - Michael Perry
"A Confederacy of Dunces" - John Kennedy O'Toole
"Wisconsin Death Trip" - Michael Lesy
"Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" - Alfred Lansing

History

Member for
14 years 3 months