Personal Information

Website

http://sleepinjeezus.posterous.com/

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

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

History

Member for

1 year 37 weeks

Blog Posts

The Poor Make Lousy Choices in Our Free Market Democracy

by SleepinJeezus 2/2/2012 - 6:01 pm

  [Read more]

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• 6 comments
• 132 reads

Interesting fact found on the way to look for something else

by SleepinJeezus 3/3/2011 - 5:27 am

Did you know that of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations?

The rest of them are countries. Including ours. At least it will be "ours" until the hostile takeover.

See other interesting details about corporations here.

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• 3 comments
• 122 reads

An Open Letter to my Fellow Citizens of Wisconsin

by SleepinJeezus 2/26/2011 - 6:38 am

This old (1994) NYT article provides excellent background detail of the Koch Brothers, going back to their father's involvement as one of the original members of the John Birch Society. It's a very interesting read, and shows just what Wisconsin's working families are up against in this take-no-prisoners assault against our Liberties and our Rights. [Read more]

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• 57 comments
• 1204 reads

Head's Up People! Walker's "Budget Repair Bill" ain't all about busting Unions

by SleepinJeezus 2/20/2011 - 12:58 pm

from the text of Wisconsin Governor Walker's "Budget Repair Bill":

Page 18; Line 8: "Except with respect to sexual orientation, the contractor further agrees to take affirmative action to ensure equal employment oppotunities." 

As proposed by Walker and his supporters, this assault on LGBT Rights will be written into Law in this State if this tyranny prevails.

I have not yet had time to review the entire document. But this, alone. should serve as sufficient warning that it ain't only the unions that this tyrant has placed in his sights for his attack against the rights of the people of Wisconsin.

Class War it is! Which side are YOU on? 

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• 5 comments
• 363 reads

Dateline: Madison, Wisconsin, Feb. 19, 2011

by SleepinJeezus 2/20/2011 - 10:33 am

Just a few impressions of my time spent at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin on Saturday

Saturday proved to be a most amazing day in what has been a week of non-violent protest against Governor Walker's Republican assault on worker's rights in Wisconsin.

Joan and I got there early enough to get a place right at the center of the Rotunda on the ground floor. [Read more]

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• 82 comments
• 2664 reads

"This is what democracy looks like!"

by SleepinJeezus 2/20/2011 - 8:05 am

 

The Capitol Building in Madison, Wisconsin has always been for me an inspiration. It's a stunning work of art fashioned from cold granite, and it makes of this unyielding material a very strong, yet welcoming edifice capable of embracing and even shaping the passions and aspirations of the people of Wisconsin. 

Never in my life have I seen it look so beautiful as in the last week, when it truly became a home for those tens of thousands who have come together to petition their government in non-violent protest of government action that defies our Wisconsin Tradition of Worker's Rights and Justice for All. [Read more]

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• 7 comments
• 535 reads

American Strategists would have us inherit the winds that blow in Cairo

by SleepinJeezus 2/4/2011 - 8:13 pm

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.

Then, I finally got a chance to listen to the DemocracyNow! live podcasts from Cairo (through yesterday), and followed that with Maddow/Engel/Williams MSNBC "live" reporting from Wed. night. I listened as I drove through the night. It was mesmerizing! [Read more]

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• 65 comments
• 777 reads

The Failure of a Thirty-Year Experiment in Reaganomics

by SleepinJeezus 1/30/2011 - 9:54 am

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. [Read more]

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• 70 comments
• 953 reads

From the "Good News Headlines" Comes the Solution to Unemployment and Despair

by SleepinJeezus 12/31/2010 - 10:12 pm

From The New York Times:

Some investors flourish amid economy's year of tumult

Investing in gold, industrials and tech stocks turns out to be a good deal

Expect Obama to announce in the State of the Union a major investment in retraining for the millions of unemployed. Monies will be spent so that we can all be re-educated and take a job in the financial sector, creating wealth. [Read more]

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• 13 comments
• 547 reads

My Christmas of the Broken Wing

by SleepinJeezus 12/25/2010 - 12:36 pm

 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. Absent any children of his own, Lemoyne took a special liking to us kids and became for us one of the favorites among the adoptive “aunts and uncles” who frequented my father’s place of business.  [Read more]

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