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

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It's all good - for Democracy?

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 01/12/2016 - 7:44pm |

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.

Poll tactics & kissin' cuzzins

By PeraclesPlease on Thu, 12/31/2015 - 8:17am |

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". 

Berntrayal: we wuz robbed

By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 12/26/2015 - 3:19am |

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.

What's funny to me is why this is news.

A New Year's Lament?

By PeraclesPlease on Wed, 12/23/2015 - 1:33am |

[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.

Missed Opportunities

By PeraclesPlease on Thu, 12/10/2015 - 6:43am |

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?

Try it this way -

Don qui jodes thee

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 12/08/2015 - 11:27am |
Jodido, simply jodido.
Le Donald is passing on the Apprentice to whoever wants it.
Situation normal, all fucked up - he's rounded the bend and headed on out to the great whatever.
Even Cheney's appalled and that motherfucker never gets appalled. Donald's given a great smooch to the left - not so much from love, but he's never been that bad - he's an asshole sure enough, bit more of a blowhard asshole. Now he's bestowing Christmas gifts - the charade's over.

A Step Back on Tolerance

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 12/01/2015 - 9:22am |

Bob Somerby's been advocating a bit of withholding judgment until facts are in, and presents 2 pretty compelling instances. 1 was a piece of tape over the face of black professors' photos, the 2nd was a noose hanging at Duke.

Debating Abortion

By PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/12/2015 - 10:19am |

In 538's summary of the GOP debate, I was struck by this item:

In his closing statement, Ben Carson said that since the debate had started, 200 abortions had been performed. That stat caught our ear. Turns out, he’s right. In 2011, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate in the U.S. was 121 per hour, or 242 over the course of the debate.

According to the CDC, there were 730,322 legal abortions in the U.S in 2011. That breaks down to about 83 per hour, or close to 170 for the two-hour debate.

It's all good... for Bernie!!!

By PeraclesPlease on Wed, 11/11/2015 - 10:11am |

Curious if I remembered how the elections went in 2008, but after reviewing polls at RealClearPolitics, I decidedly didn't - Hillary had maintained a commanding 20 point lead up to Jan 5 - and then it collapsed in days as Obama surged.

That of course means nothing in particular this time, but we still have 2 months to go. It ain't over till it's over, redux. Good luck & good fighting.

Checks & no Balances

By PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/05/2015 - 1:43am |

If you recall the times during the 2000 campaign when Bush claimed to responsibly hand back tax cut savings, with moderators never noting the discrepancies, these modern times should give you pause. What you might not have realized is that Bush's $1.9 trillion spend-fest is dwarfed by the current candidates' $6 to $11 trillion cost. [If only a Socialist wanted to break the budget by that amount, they'd be howling.] You'd be excused for not realizing this, how wacky their plans are, as this basic detail isn't much revealed by either the press or the media brainiacs moderating the "debates". You would think that part of a debate, as you learned somewhere around 8th grade debate class, was a "rebuttal", a point drilled home by references we'd crammed on, pre-internet, to fill 3x5" index cards in cardboard files to prepare for the fierce drilling of our opponents.

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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
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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.
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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...

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