The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
SleepinJeezus's picture

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

SleepinJeezus's picture

Let Marketing Take Care of the Nelson/Stupak Abortion

Perhaps creative marketing is the answer to address the separate payment contortions now apparently made necessary to receive abortion coverage from our insurance companies.Under this present proposal, methinks if I was an insurance company looking to capture over 50% of...Perhaps creative marketing is the answer to address the separate payment contortions now apparently made necessary to receive abortion coverage from our insurance co

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Don't look to Washington to offer up Economic Justice, but instead Stand Tall and Fight!

Jim Sleeper's recent post ("A Republic If You Can Keep It") prompted a vigorous discussion comparing FDR and his New Deal to the actions (or lack thereof) of our present President in addressing this failed economy. This comment thread within...
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Where's the outrage? An anthem for the working class

Every campaign for social justice has always been accompanied by its own anthems.It's time we consider taking on Wall Street. Which side are you on?...
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Viral Demagoguery Informs CNN "News" Story About Gitmo Vaccines

It seems CNN and Anderson Cooper's AC360 are in the tank and falling further behind in the ratings wars. It further seems that this has presented reason for the "Cable News Network" to emulate Fox News in a desire to manufacture...
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Who's Zoomin' Who On This Myth of the 60 Vote Threshold?

From where comes all this obsession about the supposed 60 votes needed to pass health care reform that includes the public option? What am I missing here?We are told by nearly everyone in the Dem Leadership that they prefer the...
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Inviting Our "Bastard Brothers" to a Political Showdown

As reported yesterday on TPM, Democracy Corps released a report that outlines a case to be made that the GOP base is "being motivated by a fundamentally different worldview than folks in the middle or on the Dem side."This report...
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Just Another DLC Failure on Health Care Reform

Like many in this country, I truly thought that in choosing Obama as our President, we had at last elected a credible leader capable of pursuing legitimate change in the way business is taken care of in Washington. The dire...
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Bushwhacked by the Insurance Industry Lobbyists? Oh, The Horror!

What a buzz kill!Actually, we can't quite say we couldn't see THIS coming.At the very start of this latest effort to reform our health care system, the Obama Team made it very clear that the number one priority was to make certain...
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From the GOP Bully Pulpit: No Health Care for Illegal Aliens

"Illegal aliens" are a pretty easy target in these times of economic insecurity that affects all Americans.And the Democratic Leadership - never ones to stand up to demagoguery when a simple "bi-partisan" weak-at-the-knees surrender will do - recently caved to...
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"The Dream Lives On"

Kennedy knew that we grow stronger as a nation, not by reinforcing and buttressing the powers and authority of the strongest among us, but rather by improving the lot and circumstance of the least advantaged in this society. The Dream Lives On!
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Imagine if a Healthy Ted Kennedy Were President

(NOTE: This blog entry was inspired by a discussion on another blog castigating Ted Kennedy for failing to "get out of the way." Thanks, maggie!)Imagine if Ted Kennedy were President today in place of Barack Obama. How might these health care discussions...
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Health Insurers and Their Pavlovian Ideologues Disrupt Health Care Reform

I'm grateful to obey and miguelitoh2o and all the others who have written recently with such clarity and passion about the abuses of our health insurance industry.In light of such information about Insurance Company abuses, it seems puzzling that the insurance industry...
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"Stop the Bleeding!" First a Cure, then Recovery for Health Care System

The fact that most other industrialized countries are spending 50% less and receiving better care would seem to indicate that there is a structural failure in our health care system. Wild guess here, but I'm betting that a "health INSURANCE...
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Paulson's Economic Recovery Plan is an Unqualified Success!

At the time we experienced the economic meltdown during the death throes of the Bush Administration, I was alarmed to hear the names that were suggested as the economic "experts" who would save us from this impending disaster. Paulson, Geithner,...
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The case for keeping "single payer health care" off the table

President Obama has said that if we were starting from scratch, a single payer health care plan would undoubtedly make sense. Yet this assessment is offered, unfortunately, as a roundabout way of explaining why a single payer plan will not...
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Health Care Reform or Promotion of the Health Insurance Industry? It's All a Matter of Perspective.

According to a letter in today's paper, Bill McGuire, former CEO of UnitedHealth Group, accumulated total compensation of $1.6 billion during 2005, "just a hair over $4 million a day if he worked all 365 days of the year."Like me,...
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Obama an Embarrassment on 4th of July

(The following was originally posted as a comment to TPM's Fourth of July Roundup, which discussed holiday pronouncements made by President Obama and John McCain. The responses focused mainly upon McCain, criticizing him for his political opportunism.)I think McCain...
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In a Perfect World, Bernie Meets Justice

"Hey, Bernie! So nice to meet you at last. Welcome to Leavenworth! I'm Sergeant Justice and I'll be handling your processing and orientation as a newbie inmate here."Please call me Mr. Madoff."Nah, I think not, Bernie. There are alot of...
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Who Hangs the Hangman?

When I was in my teens, I was visited many nights by the same old nightmare. This dream was one of those that was incredibly real, so much so that upon waking the first action taken was to grasp the...

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