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

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Medicare Sux: Overcharging lesson for liberals

By PeraclesPlease on Tue, 08/28/2012 - 3:58am |

 

Okay, provocative title, but point is that we charge 2-3 times per person what sane countries charge, and our "cures" are to charge another third over the next decade. Bravo, bravo.

(ref. Miller, WaPo)

I recall debates over Medicare & Social Security 6 years ago - where I pointed out to conservatives that Social Security didn't have a problem - Medicare did. Any long-term projection showed this.

Romney for President

By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 08/24/2012 - 5:29pm |

After looking at Romney's Wikipedia page, it's hard to imagine anyone better suited for president, more admirable. A pro-business guy who was friends with the common worker, a Governor who managed the budget while expanding social programs, a very effective business leader who gave back excess bonuses, who stood up for civil rights and against the war.

Why we ended up with Nixon in 1968 instead of Romney should give us pause for thought. Someone who seemed to unite the best of the right and left, an actual compassionate conservative, someone who believed in his people and his community, who raised taxes and expanded the budget to build a bigger, more effective state government.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking: Follow the RMoney

By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 08/11/2012 - 1:15pm |

Pull up a chair, kiddos, Uncle Paracles has a Fable.

Once upon a time there was a bad bad man with lots of money....

People seem confused about the Romney selection.

Why does he need to please the base so much?

He has plenty of money....

The base are still likely to vote for him - he needs the independents...

Okay, here's the deal - the choice of Ryan means Romney's been captured by tea party/nuttism.

And that nuttism, as seen from Kansas the last few weeks, has been brutally effective.

Romney Tosses Turd in Punchbowl; King David Hotel

By PeraclesPlease on Sun, 07/29/2012 - 7:20am |

Warning, "In the News" piece repeated below. As part of a rather long comment re: NBC's skipping the Olympics 7/7 memorial & demands for a Munich moment of silence, I'd made a snide aside re: memorializing the King David Hotel bombing (location of once-PM and famed Irgun warrior Menachem Begin's greatest atrocity against the British soldiers enforcing the Palestinian Mandate).

Brits toss a bone to Romney; no one notices

By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 07/28/2012 - 3:52pm |

By now we've heard about the rather feeble and desperate attempt of Mitt Romney to call upon Britain's Special Relationship to save his stumbling efforts, with the not so subtle hints to throw the Games.

What hasn't been heard is the role played by the Queen herself. Originally non-plussed over the presumptiousness of the request - after all, hadn't he spent his missionary days in France of all places - she soon found a warm spot when she discovered Mittens had had dog trouble hounding him through his campaign.

Israel Jumps the Shark, Splits the Baby

By PeraclesPlease on Sun, 07/15/2012 - 10:12am |

Israel astounded international observers this week as former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy announced in effect: "Israel never occupied nobody!" Imagine a President Romney asking Justice Scalia to provide a definitive interpretation of the Obamacare decision. The results could hardly be more unsurprising.

Fox, meet chicken coop. Chicken coop, meet fox. With Netanyahu assembling / stacking this committee of like-minded thinkers to come up with a way to prove their settlements were legal, they creatively fell back on familiar ground: the West Bank was already Israel's so they could build wherever they want anyway.

Anne Frank as Literature

By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 07/13/2012 - 1:35am |

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/289227-1

Brilliant lecture about history & development of Anne Frank's opus I ran across last night - including how much she re-wrote it her last year, how many pages went into it that weren't seen from the original, and from the speaker's view most important, that almost no one's given the book credence as literature in its own right, including a need to view its prose as creativity, not just a document.

25 year nostalgia: The Montreal Protocol

By PeraclesPlease on Fri, 07/06/2012 - 10:11am |

Imagine the 2 leaders of the world's Conservative movement agreeing that industry is destroying the environment, and taking decisive, concerted action to stop it.

That in effect is what happened in 1987 when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol, to ban CFCs, which took effect less than 2 years later and had drastically beneficial effects on the Ozone Hole. 

Of course it wasn't just conservatives who pushed this measure, and it was based on science that evolved over a decade, but from the view of 2012 it's still amazing. Now the conservative official line is that man can't really affect the environment, which rather than relying on the "6000" history of the world, simply denies confirmed reality of 25 years ago. Work across the aisle for the sake of the Environment? Pshaw. Rio? D.O.A.

John Roberts goes rogue?

By PeraclesPlease on Thu, 06/28/2012 - 8:16pm |

Roberts delivered a delight today.

Not only did he pull out a justification for the mandate, he did it in a way that still slams the overreach of the Commerce Clause, provides insight that it's fungible as a tax, and aligns with liberals for the first time in.... never.

It's tickling in one sense to see him acting as a real conservative - the mandate *was* an overreach for Commerce - by breathing, the government can make you buy *anything*?

The Mandate & Collusion: another Gangsta parade?

By PeraclesPlease on Mon, 06/25/2012 - 2:27am |

CMaukonen's nicely been tracking Taibbi & Yves Smith's effort on bank collusion on public bonds (transcript here), that stole money from every local initiative over how many years, audaciously justified in court by "the towns got a good enough rate". In their eyes, "market rate" = "bargained collusion rate", and since they're fair enough, the market just works. 

Imagine how messy it'd be if towns had to compete to get actual highest returns for their bonds? What's wrong with everyone giving hand signals to rotate the winners of bond deals between 3 veteran financial houses?

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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
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...

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