Defies gravity
Can spit really far
Almost touch my toes
Can cut a fly's legs off with a beer cap from 20 paces
Know how to say useless stuff and prattle on in a dozen languages
Don't know when to shut up
Favorite Quotes
To be for or against the Plague, it's much the same thing.
Fiddledee, how a body shure do get around - just 2 weeks ago I was in Mississippi and now I'm all the way to Tennessee...
Eat or Be Eaten
Better to be pissed off than pissed on.
Biography
Born in swaddling clothes (designer, of course) at the confluence of big waters, my first recorded words were "Dad, can I have the keys to the car?" Raised a Southern Pedestrian, my musical talents were recognized at an early age, leading to my being exiled to the shed out back with a stack of books that became my eddykayshun - advanced readin', writin' & ritmytick, creating a major quandary of "what will I do, oh what will I do?" (Gunslinger)
As an old black man advised in song, "You Gotta Move", so move I did, traveling the byways sideways even a lot of driveways, picking up sticks and psychological tics, even movin' to Beverlee through a quaint misunderstanding of the seriousness of TV series, until finally I blew up so big the carry nation incarnation tarnation couldn't hold me no more, so I fixed my sights on yonder sitar, and like Queequeg and Paul Bowles and one of those abducted kids by the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I ventured forth to the larger world, pickin' and grinnin', doin' me some reckonin' and naughts from naughts, occasionally rightin', building me some buildings and wiring and just trying to understand the babble comin' out of people's mouths and heads, I finally ended up in what Rummy quaintly calls "New Europe", which ain't so new from what I sees, but that pit in my stomach from lack-of-moving-sickness finally disappeared, and instead I sit behind a whopping big desk stacked with missives from all the chiefs with big whampum around the world telling me "what's going on". Which seems like a load of boolshit to me, but I guess that's what keeps me busy and entertained now, separatin' the weeds from the chapstick.
So my name is Perry Keys, or Peracles to you, and since my mammy always said, "say please and thank you", I added the please, but I'm holdin' back on that thankee until I feel you've earned it. But do welcome, and I hope we's a gonna have a real good time. It all starts with, "I wuz born a poor young white chile livin' in the South..." and we cycle through again, like Nietzsche and his infernal regurgence. So enjoy, and let's spin a spell...
[started off as followup to rmrd on Coates & Sanders]
1) there is no path to a Democratic presidency without the black base. Hispanics are important, and of course whites are still the majority, but for the Democratic core, African-Americans are the sine quo non. Which makes New Hampshire and Iowa largely humorous.
2) Sanders hired a BlackLivesMatter activist as national press secretary, so Flint should have been a no-brainer, as should responding to Coates - though maybe the the BLM playbook calls for resignations, rather than pressure to solve problems.
Martin Luther King was a traitor. As was John Brown, Frederick Douglas, Malcolm X, Mandela, Biko, and many many others we admire.
Robert E. Lee was also a traitor, as was Lincoln, as were the US colonists in 1776 and the first settlers leaving England and Holland, as was Sitting Bull, as was Gandhi and Xanana Gusmão and Vaclav Havel and Aung San Suu Kyi and Wang Dan of Tiananmen.
1) I think we're seeing a Clinton thing where she also doesn't do well unless under pressure and in trouble. Sure, organized and all that, but not inspiring.
2) In the case of Bernie, he's had the message, something of the synthesis without the details. Hillary's been the opposite - all the tools in the toolkit, but no obvious picture of what the job is, who the customer is.
Now that polls are tightening, the internet has exploded with amateur campaign experts to explain why Hillary's sunk, what she should have done, how she should behave. They rightly note that this has happened before - but not just 2008. In 1992, in 1996, in 2000, in July of last year and again in October. Deconstructing Hillary is a cottage industry that's made many rich. Trump draws crowds by saying outrageous things, Sanders draws crowds by stirring outrage, Hillary on her own is simple outrageous.
As Pat Buchanan and Donald Trump pile on the loss of manufacturing jobs, it's interesting that manufacturing seems to have rebounded significantly since, adding maybe 800K jobs by now, according to 2014 analysis & one from ESA out last year.
Less than 3 weeks to Iowa, & we're into reading tea leaves and divining political augury.
I'll identify a few things in the campaigns & political structure that I find capricious and curious - largely from a Hillary vantage, in case not obvious. Toss your own salad, observations & thoughts, as you please.
Somewhere Joe must feel really aggrieved. After months of having his dead son shill for him to enter the race, and his long Hamlet-inspired decision, he's back to wrap the noose around her neck. With frenemies like this, who needs fambily?
More I wonder who actually cares? Biden was always themilque toast guy sent in to cut an unpalatable deal, roll it over. Mr. Insurance is now an export on income inequality? Took him long enough to figure it out.
Looks like $37m of Hillary's take was hard cash, putting her with $38m cash-on-hand.
For the populist inclined, "The campaign noted that more than 60 percent of donations came from women, and 94 percent of all donations in the final quarter of the year were $100 or less."
Assuming January fundraising goes well and spending doesn't go overboard, she should be well set for February contests & the 30 or so March contests.
Growing up, every time there was a close football game, I got to hear Frank Gifford or Dan Meredith exclaim how a tie is like kissing your cousin. (My initial reaction was "which one?" some of my cousins were pretty damn cute.)
At this stage in New Hampshire, it looks like Bernie's playing for a tie - roughly 2 point spread for the last 2 months, and within 5 points since August.
The sad news for Bernie fans is that's not good enough - at this point it's dialed into everyone's expectations that New Hampshire's Sanders' back yard, that he should win - it's no longer an "upset".
Keeping an eye on the Bernie squad's meta for some time, there's been an interesting undercurrent of how unfair the whole process is since last summer.
Remember Lee Majors and his artificial $6 million man? Well Trump thinks he's about 2000x better, faking a budget and unaffordable slashes to government, like a true RoboGOP Trumpinator would - let's play "guess the real Rep(ub)licant" Will we wrap this around his neck, $1 trillion a year Unsustainable cuts? Or will we talk haircuts and insults forever? Make him own it - budget on the moon or in the clapper? You decide. But keep it front and center - this ain't trickle down - it's a gusher to his friends.
[seemed a shame to waste this/have it disappear as a throwaway comment]
Once upon a time there were people who expressed themselves - for me perhaps MLK & RFK & others in amazing books I'd read, you may have your own - in a way that was lucid and compelling and convincing. I could listen to them and I'd find reason to mull over what they said and incorporate what they had to say in my belief system - they provided new grist for the mill, not merely retread.
More surprising than Scalia's attitudes this week were the Texas attorney's weak arguments.
"Now's not the time to lower diversity"? Jesus Christ, why not say "you're wrong, I'm right"? Wouldn't we demand our money back, look for better support than this?
Realized my original posting of this got switched with an article on marijuana.
As I said at the time: the article notes even her opponents don't know the awful screwup of hers and Obama's policy in Libya. How can we get better with such denial and incomprehension of past mistakes?