SleepinJeezus | dagblog

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

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.

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.

GayUganda: The Struggle Continues

By SleepinJeezus on Sat, 01/29/2011 - 5:40pm |

http://gayuganda.blogspot.com/2011/01/struggle-continues.html

Sadly, sometimes it takes a remarkable degree of courage simply to live and be "You" in a society gone mad.

Rest in Peace, David Kato. And may your brothers and sisters soon find peace for themselves in Uganda, and in a place way short of the grave. Solidarity!

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Obama to use SOTU to double-down on Free Trade and Deficit Reduction

By SleepinJeezus on Sun, 01/23/2011 - 5:38am |

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41208319/ns/politics-white_house/

The White House sees competitiveness as a framework Republicans could support. GOP lawmakers traditionally have backed the types of trade deals and research-and-development efforts that Obama is promoting. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared to give the president an opening when he said last week in a speech that "my advice to my colleagues is if the president is willing to do what we would do anyway, then we should say yes."

JPMorgan reports 47% jump in 4Q profits

By SleepinJeezus on Fri, 01/14/2011 - 3:08pm |

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41072604/

47% increase in profits for JPMorgan for the last quarter. Profits in a single quarter increased to $4.8 billion from $3.3 billion on a 6% increase in revenue. Most of the "profits" are funds distributed to shareholders from the bank's loan-loss reserves. Haven't we seen this show someplace before? What could possibly go wrong?

Gonna' start my own confectionary company, making "Too Big To Fail Suckers" in the shape of Uncle Sam. Think I can get a loan from JPMorgan for this start-up?

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AZ Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is shot

By SleepinJeezus on Sat, 01/08/2011 - 2:05pm |

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40978517/ns/politics/

BREAKING NEWS Details sketchy.

Read more about AZ Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is shot
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From the "Good News Headlines" Comes the Solution to Unemployment and Despair

By SleepinJeezus on Fri, 12/31/2010 - 9:12pm |

From The New York Times:

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.

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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Dr. Mengele, Economist

By SleepinJeezus on Sun, 09/19/2010 - 6:12am |

"For the recovery to be sustainable and as strong as possible, it has to be based on a different composition of spending in the world. Before the crisis, the U.S. consumer - the over-extended U.S. consumer - was the kind of source for demand for a large chunk of the rest of the world. Chinese exported to us.

"The Only Thing We Have Is Fear Itself"

By SleepinJeezus on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 12:26pm |

"Don't call for help, no one will heed you!"We have the Republicans who peddle hatred and xenophobia and racism as a way of avoiding the shame of taking responsibility for the abject failure of their thirty year experiment in Reaganomics....

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On Financial Reform: "Way to go, Mr. Dodd! You Rawk!"

By SleepinJeezus on Sat, 06/26/2010 - 5:07pm |

(This was written originally as a comment, but is re-posted here)At least our pols in Washington allow us to PRETEND we operate in a democracy. They go through the motions and try (Really, really try, they do! Honest!) to pass...

Gulf Disaster Warning was Posted Early on the Road to Hell

By SleepinJeezus on Fri, 06/04/2010 - 2:54pm |

Last night, songwriter Chris Rea channeled for me the ghosts that have been haunting us all in the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon blew sky high and then sunk to the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, taking 11...

These aren't MY Democrats!

By SleepinJeezus on Thu, 05/20/2010 - 8:12pm |

"This bill is short of what Congress should do, but it moves in the right direction, although it moves less aggressively than I would like to see it move." Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), after caving to pressure from Wall Street...

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Obama Trade Policy Announcement Raises Questions

By SleepinJeezus on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 11:36pm |

President Obama recently announced his new Trade Policy in which he promises to double exports in five years and to create two million jobs.It looks like a continuation of the globalization of our economy that gave us such stellar successes...

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Kyl & Bunning sponsor bi-partisan NAFTA-II Jobs Bill

By SleepinJeezus on Wed, 03/03/2010 - 7:12pm |

SleepinJeezusJobs ReporterDissociated PressMarch 3, 2010(Washington, DC) Two of the GOP's leading Jobs Reform advocates in Washington have joined forces in presenting a bi-partisan Jobs Bill that the Congressional Budget Office says could drastically reduce unemployment.John Kyl (R-Uranus) and Jim Bunning...

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Josh Marshall: Soft on Terror?

By SleepinJeezus on Sat, 01/02/2010 - 2:42pm |

In Josh Marshall's back-and-forth with The National Review's writers Thiessen and McCarthy, Marshall credits McCarthy for making a more coherent argument in favor of trying the "Underwear Bomber" in a military tribunal rather than in a civilian court.Theissen argues in...

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